VITAL RESTORATIONS // NEW WORKS FROM THE CAPITOL ART COLLECTION

by Kristen Grace Unknown

to many Oklahomans, the historic Capitol building has become the largest free art museum in the state, its marble halls open to the public most days of the year. Ten years ago, it was a different story. Mold, leaks, and even falling marble caused Preservation Oklahoma to put the Capitol on a list of the state’s most endangered places in 2013. Just one year later, the Oklahoma State Capitol Restoration Project began, funded by more than $245 million in bonds approved by the legislature. Oklahoma law requires certain capital improvement projects undertaken by the state to dedicate 1.5 percent of their budgets to on-site public art, a stipulation that provided an opportunity for the Capitol to enhance its art collection with new commissions. The Oklahoma Art Commission assessed the art displayed at the Capitol and decided to seek commissions to address aspects of Oklahoma’s history that had been previously left out.

While giving a recent tour of the newly remodeled Capitol and introducing the new art, Jarica Walsh, Director of the Art in Public Places Program for the Oklahoma Arts Council, reflected on the OAC’s motivation. “This is the people’s house,” she said. “We want all of Oklahoma’s people to be reflected here.”

To date, the Oklahoma Arts Council has brought in 21 new works to the Capitol building. Artwork throughout the ground floor now focuses on Oklahoma’s pre-statehood and Native American history. This new Indigenous emphasis begins in the Capitol’s entrance where visitors are greeted by a video incorporating Native languages produced by Buffalo Nickel Creative with the help of Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Muscogee), co-creator of the made-in-Oklahoma hit series “Reservation Dogs.” But the focus on Native American artwork does not stop there.

Outside the Supreme Court chamber on the second floor, guests will find the new Hall of Heroes, which pays tribute to the state’s military history and includes a new work by Choctaw artist Dylan Cavin titled Anumpa Luma Anumpuli Choctaw for “code talkers.” The painting takes inspiration from a rare photo of the Choctaw code talkers who served in WWI. Cavin’s painting captures the sharp clarity of the men’s dark green uniforms and dignified facial expressions, while in the background, the air is full of debris, reminiscent of the cloud of confusion the men were able to maintain around the enemy. The Choctaw code talkers, like the later Navajo code talkers of WWII, used their native language in the service of the U.S. military to stay one step ahead of the enemy. Native Americans serving in the first world war were not considered U.S. citizens at the time of their service. Citizenship would not be granted to them until 1924.

Installed in February of this year, Making Her Mark by Sara Scribner is a mural of four Oklahoma women: astronaut Shannon Lucid; Opaline Deveraux Wadkins, a nurse, activist for desegregation and the first Black woman to earn a master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma; Chief Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to serve as chief of a major Native American tribe; and Maxine Horner, one of the first Black women elected to the Oklahoma Senate. This mural is located, fittingly, overlooking the Hall of Governors, a collection of the bronzed busts of every governor in Oklahoma’s history. The placement of the mural, as well as the women standing together in shades of regal blue, feels purposeful. Looking down from an imposing height, the women in the painting might be understood as gathering inspiration from some of the best of Oklahoma’s past leadership and standing on the threshold of a hopeful future.

A portrait of Chief Wilma Mankiller by artist Starr Hardridge (Muscogee) has been added on the fifth floor in the Hall of Heroes. In his portraiture, Hardridge is influenced by classical art, but in his work on Mankiller he uses an assemblage of pointillism and a southeastern woodland beadwork aesthetic. His bold use of color and geometry works to highlight and even give glamour to the Cherokee Chief. Hardridge’s portrait also showcases the Cherokee seven-pointed star as well as the Cherokee syllabary above Mankiller’s head.

Not surprisingly, the Capitol honors such pride-of-Oklahoma stalwarts as Woody Guthrie, Will Rogers, and Wiley Post, but also Chickasaw storyteller Te Ata and civil rights leader Clara Luper, who is represented with a newly fashioned bust by Oklahoma artist LaQuincey Reed. A new mural depicting the Katz Drug Store sit-in of 1958 is coming soon, as is a mural celebrating Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, whose legacy lives on despite the tragic destruction of the district in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Through art, these stories will be displayed on the walls of our state Capitol for our students and citizens.

Walking through the marble halls of the Oklahoma State Capitol, one can see that this place has become a visible record of our state’s past, both glorious and sorrowful. Its thoughtful artworks have in many cases has become vessels for history lessons that were hidden from many of us in school.

“Hopefully in the next five years, we’ll be ready to get every student across the state to the Capitol to see the renovated building in their lifetime,” says Oklahoma Arts Council Executive Director Amber Sharples. “We want to leverage the artwork as an educational tool, which it’s always been.”

This place is more than just a house of state, more than a museum. It’s the people’s house.

The Oklahoma State Capitol is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends. For guided tours and more information, please see arts.ok.gov/tours

KRISTEN GRACE is a journalist for 405 Magazine and 405 Business Magazine, a freelance copyeditor for Callisto Media, and a graduate of Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA program. She has authored a picture book for children, The Stepmother Who Believed in Feathers, as well as Wings, a collection of feminist fairy tales, both available from Literati Press. She has recently published poems in Focus Magazine, Mid/South, Freezeray, Behind the Rain Anthology and other literary journals.