Sam Noble Gallery
The Sam Noble Gallery highlights Oklahoma’s early history, and features rotating exhibits on various topics. Through artifacts and images, visitors can relive the experiences of settlers, farmers, and cowboys. The Oklahoma Centennial Farm & Ranch Program section recognizes families who have continuously occupied their land and carried out farming or ranching operations for at least 100 years. The law and order section explores early lawmen and outlaws and law enforcement today. while a replica sod house, a 1930s-era house, and a 1950s pink kitchen give visitors a window into how Oklahomans lived.
Inaugural Impressions
This exhibit features an array of gowns worn by first ladies from Oklahoma Historical Society collections. Inaugural Impressions explores the lives and contributions of Oklahoma’s first ladies while their spouses served as governor. Learn more about this exhibit and Oklahomas first ladies and gentleman.
Oklahoma Sports Heroes
This exhibit highlights the achievements of Oklahoma athletes across various sports, linking them to the historical context and events during their careers.
Visitors will recognize sports legends such as Jim Thorpe and Mickey Mantle alongside athletes from recent years, including Kaleo Kanahele Maclay and Noah Zuhdi. Guests can revisit beloved sports icons and discover new sports heroes.
The exhibit featurea items recently added to the Oklahoma Historical Society’s collections, made possible by a generous donation from the Oklahoma Sports Heritage Museum in Guthrie. The Oklahoma History Center Museum expresses its gratitude to the broader Oklahoma sports history community for their support in bringing this exhibit to life.
Basketball star Wayman Tisdale, 1983 (2012.201.B1283.0892, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, OHS)
Curators’ Corner
Oklahoma-Built Excellence: GM OKC aims to tell the story of the Oklahoma City General Motors plant and its employees.
Through a timeline, archival newspaper prints, artifacts, and photographs, visitors will learn the history of the plant and its contribution to the economic growth of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma as a whole. The Oklahoma City plant provided an estimated 7,500 local jobs outside the plant, with an additional 2,600 jobs inside the plant. The exhibit looks at the growth provided by General Motors and what happened to the employees following its closure.
Curators’ Corner highlights recent museum donations or artifacts specially chosen by the curators for the unique stories each item tells. The artifacts in Curators’ Corner rotate periodically.
Line workers from left, Greg Raymo, Herb Weldman, and John Berisko, check the electrical system on a 1982 Chevrolet Citation at the General Motors Assembly Division plant in southwest Oklahoma City (2012.201.B1078.0405, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, OHS).
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!: The Birth of Modern Musical Theatre and a New Image for the State
Based on the 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs by Claremore native Lynn Riggs, Oklahoma! was the first musical written by the legendary team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! began a new era in American musical theatre. It also began the most successful songwriting partnership that Broadway has ever seen.
Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on March 31, 1943, and closed after 2,212 performances. Set in Indian Territory just after the turn of the twentieth century, the spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys provides the backdrop for the love story between Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a beautiful farm girl.
The title of the History Center exhibit makes reference to a “New Image for the State.” In 1939 John Steinbeck published his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, a fictional account of the mass migration of thousands of “Okies” from Oklahoma to California in search of jobs, land, dignity and a future in the shadow of the Great Depression. The novel cast an image of hopelessness, bank foreclosures and economic hardship on Oklahoma. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! counteracted this image with its lively musical comedy that, despite a few fight scenes that include an accidental death, portrayed romance, laughter and a spirit of joy in direct contrast to the storyline of The Grapes of Wrath.
Explore More with Google Arts & Culture
Visit the Oklahoma Historical Society on Google Arts & Culture to learn about playwright Lynn Riggs, the early history of the state, and the lasting impact of the musical Oklahoma!
Lynn Riggs
