Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is the art museum of the University of Oklahoma, located on the university's campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1936, it holds more than 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum is particularly distinguished by its strengths in French Impressionism and the art of indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially Native American art, alongside significant holdings in Asian art, contemporary art, and photography. Its collections have been shaped substantially by major donations from patrons, reflecting a collecting history that spans from its origins with Asian art gifts to transformative acquisitions of European modernism in the twenty-first century.

The museum originated as the Oklahoma University Museum of Art, established in 1936 by Oscar Brousse Jacobson, a Swedish-born painter who had directed the University of Oklahoma's art school since 1915 and had begun collecting artworks in the 1920s. The founding was prompted by a donation of Asian art to the university that same year. Jacobson served as the museum's first director until his retirement in 1950, with a particular focus on contemporary Native American art. In 1971, businessman Fred Jones and his wife funded a new museum building, named the Fred Jones Jr. Memorial Art Center in memory of their son, a former university student who died in a 1950 plane crash. The institution adopted its current name, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, in 1992. Under University of Oklahoma president David L. Boren, who took office in 1994, the museum embarked on a major expansion campaign with his wife Molly Shi Boren. The Lester Wing, designed by Washington, D.C. architect Hugh Jacobsen and named for San Francisco donors Mary and Howard Lester, opened in 2005 and doubled the museum's size. In 2007, the museum became co-steward of the Eugene B. Adkins Collection together with the Philbrook Museum of Art. The Stuart Wing, designed by architect Rand Elliott and named for a gift from the Stuart Family Foundation, opened in October 2011. This 18,000 square-foot addition, constructed above the original 1971 structure, houses collections acquired in the preceding fifteen years and includes the Eugene B. Adkins Gallery, a new photography gallery, and administrative offices, bringing total exhibition space to approximately 40,000 square feet. Leadership has included Ghislain d'Humières as Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director from 2007 to 2013, Emily Ballew Neff in 2013-2014, and Mark White from 2015 until his resignation in April 2020.

The museum's collection encompasses more than 20,000 objects spanning multiple continents and centuries. Its scope reflects the varied interests of its donors, with particular depth in several areas. French Impressionism and related late nineteenth and early twentieth-century European painting form a major strength, anchored by the 2000 gift of the Weitzenhoffer Collection. The museum holds significant holdings in Native American and Southwestern art, including traditional and contemporary works, as well as Asian art that dates to the institution's founding. Other collection areas include Eastern Orthodox icons, ceramics, photography, graphics from the sixteenth century to the present, and contemporary art. The museum also maintains a notable collection of works on paper, including Renaissance and Baroque prints and drawings.

The Weitzenhoffer Collection, donated in 2000, contains paintings by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Specific works from this bequest include Monet's La Berge à Lavacourt, Gauguin's Wintertag, Signac's Küstenszene, Rousseau's Rue en Banlieue, Vlaminck's La Seine à Chatou, Vuillard's Bouleaux à l'Etang-la-Ville, and Dufy's La Plage de Sainte-Adresse. Still lifes include Renoir's Roses und Chrysanthemums and Bonnard's Nature morte à la théière. Pastel works feature Degas's Danseuse à la barre and Redon's Les Oeillets. The Fleischaker Collection comprises more than 350 pieces of Native American and Southwestern paintings, sculpture, and ceramics, including works by Russian Taos painters Leon Gaspard and Nicolai Fechin. The Thams Collection holds 32 paintings by members of the Taos Society of Artists. The McGhee Collection of Eastern Orthodox icons dates from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, originating from Greece, Russia, Romania, and Turkey. The museum's Asian art holdings began with a 1936 gift of 758 objects from Louis Hanies Wentz and Richard Gorden Matzene, including Gandhara sculptures, Persian miniatures, Nepalese and Tibetan art, Chinese ceramics, bronzes, and paintings. In 1948, the museum purchased the State Department Collection from the controversial Advancing American Art exhibition, a cultural diplomacy initiative dismantled by Congress in 1947. The Creight E. Gilbert bequest of 2005 added 272 works on paper from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries, including Rembrandt van Rijn's etching Der heilige Hieronymus im dunklen Zimmer. A painting attributed to Luca Giordano and Hendrick de Clerck's Perseus und Andromeda represent Baroque painting holdings. Sculptures in the outdoor collection include Fernando Botero's bronze Sphinx and Barbara Hepworth's Two Figures.

The museum's ownership of Camille Pissarro's Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep was the subject of prolonged international litigation. The painting had been seized by Nazis during the German occupation of France from Raoul and Yvonne Meyer, heirs to the Galeries Lafayette department store fortune. After Raoul Meyer's postwar recovery efforts failed, his adopted daughter Léone-Noëlle Meyer filed suit against the museum and university in 2014. A 2016 settlement awarded Meyer the painting with a provision that it return to Oklahoma after five years, with subsequent three-year rotations. In 2020, Meyer initiated French legal proceedings to halt the rotations, prompting the museum to sue for contempt penalties. On 1 June 2021, Meyer abandoned ownership claims, and the painting remained with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

The museum's original 1936 location was in a former library building on campus, today known as Jacobson Hall in honor of the museum's founder. The current 1971 building, designed by the Oklahoma City firm Howard and Samis, stands at the corner of Parrington Oval and W. Boyd Street on the university campus. The Hugh Jacobsen-designed Lester Wing, characterized by its hut-like form, opened in 2005 with its entrance on Elm Avenue, which serves as the museum's main entrance. The 2011 Stuart Wing by Rand Elliott connects the existing buildings while adding 18,000 square feet above the original structure. The grounds feature outdoor sculpture including works by Fernando Botero and Barbara Hepworth.

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma, with its main entrance in the Lester Wing on Elm Avenue. As a university museum, it functions as part of the University of Oklahoma's cultural and educational mission. The museum maintains a website at https://www.ou.edu/fjjma for further information. Its total exhibition space of approximately 40,000 square feet accommodates permanent collections and temporary exhibitions across its interconnected original 1971 building, the 2005 Lester Wing, and the 2011 Stuart Wing.