Throughout the nineteenth century, the land known as "Indian Territory" was populated by diverse cultures, troubled by shifting political boundaries, and transformed by historical events that were colorful, dramatic, and often tragic. Beyond its borders, most Americans visualized the area through the pictures produced by non-Native travelers, artists, and reporters--all with differing degrees of accuracy, vision, and skill. The images in Picturing Indian Territory, and the eponymous exhibit it accompanies, conjure a wildly varied vision of Indian Territory's past.

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In the 1950s, the American Southwest became a crossroads for Abstract Expressionists from the New York School and the San Francisco Bay Area. Elaine de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, and others found inspiration in the expansive land and sky of the region and used gestural brushwork and veils of color to depict the vast spaces and distinctive coloring of the landscape. They joined with local artists in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas to create a distinctly modern view of the Southwest that expressed the aesthetic and cultural concerns of postwar America....

Oscar Brousse Jacobson (1882 1966) was a prolific artist who devoted much of his career to the depiction of the wilderness of the American West, especially Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. He also became a passionate supporter of the visual arts in the Southwest and an enthusiastic promoter of Native American fine artists, such as the early Kiowa artists, Acee Blue Eagle, and others. Over the course of his forty-year career at the University of Oklahoma, he oversaw the dramatic expansion of the School of Art and the creation of an art museum in 1936 that would eventually...