The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is a non-profit art museum in

Shawnee, Oklahoma Shawnee ( sac, Shânîheki) is a city in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 29,857 in 2010, a 4.9 percent increase from the figure of 28,692 in 2000. The city is part of the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical ...

, USA. It is located on the

Oklahoma Baptist University Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) is a private Baptist university in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was established in 1910 under the original name of The Baptist University of Oklahoma. OBU is owned and was founded by the Baptist General Convention of ...

Green Campus, being the campus of the former

St. Gregory's University St. Gregory's University was a private Catholic university. It was one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It had its main campus in Shawnee and an additional campus in Tulsa. The university closed its oper ...

. The museum operated independently of St. Gregory's and survived its closure. The museum’s collection includes over 3,500 artworks, and spans over 6,000 years of art, and represents cultures from around the world including ancient Egyptian, Chinese, pre-Columbian, African, Native American, European, and American art. The museum houses the official portrait of Pope Pius X and Oklahoma’s only Egyptian mummies. The museum includes a gift shop that sells educational toys, publications related to their exhibitions and arts and crafts from local artisans. The MGMoA is a member of the Oklahoma Association of Museums and a member agency of Oklahoma City's Allied Arts. The museum hosts the annual festival Arts Trek.

History

The museum is named for Fr.

Gregory Gerrer Rev. Gregory Gerrer, OSB (July 23, 1867August 24, 1946) was a Benedictine Priest at Sacred Heart Abbey (later, St. Gregory's Abbey), artist, art historian and museum founder. Art career From 1900 to 1904, Gerrer studied art in Rome. Shortly a ...

, a

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

monk of St. Gregory's Abbey, who was an art historian and art collector. During his travels in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, he acquired art and artifacts to exhibit in Oklahoma. In 1919, the collection moved to Benedictine Hall where it was called St. Gregory's Abbey Art Gallery and Museum. G. Patrick Riley visited the museum as a child in the early 1940s, and credits these visits as his inspiration to become an artist. Starting in 1962, the Gerrer collection was on long term loan to the Oklahoma Science and Arts Foundation in Oklahoma City. St Gregory's Abbey built a new building as a permanent home for the collection with matching funds from the Mabee Foundation. The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art opened in 1979. The building was designed by Chadsey/Architects from

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

Etruscan Treasures

The museum was the exclusive United States venue to show Etruscan Treasures, an exhibit which featured Etruscan and Roman gold work, as well as artifacts from the Vatican Museums. This was the first time that the gold jewelry, from the collection of Prince Fabrizio Alliata di Montereale, was publicly displayed. The exhibit ran from June 1 through October 31, 2004, and was featured in a documentary produced by Oklahoma's Public Television Station.

Mummy Research

In August 2015, St. Anthony Shawnee Hospital performed CT scans on the two Egyptian mummies in the museum's collection. The mummies previously visited the same hospital in 1991 for X-rays. The scans showed that Tutu's organs had been individually mummified and placed back inside her stomach and chest cavity before she was wrapped in linen.

Collection

The museum's collection began with a gift in 1903. While Fr. Gregory Gerrer was traveling in the Holy Land, he was presented with an Egyptian scarab with the hieroglyphic goose symbol on it. The museum houses an artifact collection that includes an ancient Egyptian

mummy A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay fu ...

and

sarcophagus A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Gre ...

, ancient Egyptian

animal mummies Animal mummification was common in ancient Egypt. Animals were an enormous part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. Many different types of animals were mummified, typically for four main p ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

glass,

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

pottery, ancient Chinese

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terra ...

figures,

an ivory and icons,

Venetian Venetian often means from or related to: * Venice, a city in Italy * Veneto, a region of Italy * Republic of Venice (697–1797), a historical nation in that area Venetian and the like may also refer to: * Venetian language, a Romance language s ...

armor,

Mesoamerican Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Withi ...

stone carvings, shrunken heads,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

colonial paintings, and

n masks and bronzes. The paintings collection includes work from

Guido Reni Guido Reni (; 4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religi ...

Tintoretto Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed wit ...

, Guercino,

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ( , ; late December 1617, baptized January 1, 1618April 3, 1682) was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contempora ...

Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ra ...

William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...

William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons School of Design. ...

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...

and

Robert Priseman Robert Priseman (born in Spondon, Derbyshire in 1965) is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in Essex, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world in ...

Spanish Colonial Art

The institute's holdings in Spanish Colonial art include retablos (small religious paintings, frequently on tin), wooden sculptures of saints, and paintings. One anonymous painting, Christ of Ixmiquilpan, dates to the early 19th century and captures a miraculous alter scene in Mexico City. A temporary exhibition of Spanish Colonial Art ran from April to June in 2010. The collection was shown at the

Arlington Museum of Art The Arlington Museum of Art is a non-collecting art museum located in downtown Arlington, Texas. It hosts art exhibitions and also offers art-related adult workshops, children's classes, film screenings, and lectures. A not-for-profit 501(c)(3) or ...

Arlington, Texas Arlington is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Tarrant County. It forms part of the Mid-Cities region of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan statistical area, and is a principal city of the metropolis and region ...

in a special exhibition from April 12 to May 26, 2013.

References

External links

Museum website

Mabee-Gerrer Museum information, photos and video TravelOK.com
Official travel and tourism website for the State of Oklahoma {{authority control Art museums established in 1919 Art museums and galleries in Oklahoma St. Gregory's University Museums in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma 1919 establishments in Oklahoma