When people run out of room to put stuff, they clean and purge. But when you’re a world-class home to art treasures, you grow. Philbrook Museum of Art is making the leap with Philbrook Downtown, a contemporary art gallery that puts the institution housed in a gorgeous Italian villa-style mansion near Brookside into the heart of the Brady Arts District near a host of cool new galleries, exhibition spaces and institutions such as the Woody Guthrie Center, Living Arts of Tulsa, Hardesty Arts Center and Zarrow Center for Art and Education. The branch gallery will exhibit work from Philbrook’s large American Indian art collection and its ever-growing accumulation of contemporary and modern works, which makes its first show, Opening Abstraction, the perfect plunge into a vibrant new art scene. Philbrook Downtown, located in the old Mathews Warehouse on Brady Street opposite the Guthrie Green, opens to the public from noon-9 p.m. Friday, June 14. The abstract exhibit runs through Jan. 5.
Opening weekend hours also include noon-7 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Opening weekend events are free. Admission ($7-$9) begins June 19. For more, see www.philbrook.org.
