Woody at One Hundred

It seems hard to believe that Woody Guthrie would have turned 100 years old this year. Born July 14, 1912, the Okemah native quickly moved into the national arena as a young man writing and singing songs that spoke to the common people struggling through the Great Depression of the 1930s. As the country trudges through another economic collapse, those songs and words still speak to us. It’s as if Guthrie has always been with us. He died in 1967. Gilcrease Museum honors our troubadour with Woody at One Hundred, an exhibition of artifacts from Guthrie’s life (including hand-written lyrics to “This Land is Your Land”), art created of the folk hero’s image and other objects testifying to his belief in social, political and spiritual justice. The event is curated by the Grammy Museum and Woody Guthrie Archives to coincide with a tribute scheduled for the Feb. 12 Grammy Awards broadcast on CBS. It also heralds the 2013 arrival of Guthrie’s archives, recently purchased by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, in a new facility in Tulsa. Woody at One Hundred goes on exhibit Feb. 5-April 29. www.gilcrease.org