Museum of the Red River
Idabel
Founded: 1975
McCurtain County, the most southeastern portion of Oklahoma, is one of the poorest areas in the country. That means the Museum of the Red River has a great obligation to offer art and culture to residents in the area, says Henry Moy, the Quintus H. Herron Director of the museum.
“We are the only cultural facility in a 200-mile radius,” says Moy.
When the museum was founded 40 years ago, it began as a place to showcase excavations from archaeological projects going on in southeast Oklahoma at the time, as well as the American Indian art and artifact collections of Quintus and Mary Herron, prominent Idabel citizens. The museum evolved into one that now houses collections of art and artifacts from the Americas, Asia, the South Pacific, Africa and more. In addition to a cast of a dinosaur unearthed in McCurtain County – a 40-foot-long acrocanthosaurus – the museum boasts 25,000 objects, including a comprehensive collection of Southwest ceramics and a top collection of ethnographic art from tribes in the Amazon.
