Philbrook Museum of Art

Waite Phillips was born in 1883 in Iowa and moved to Oklahoma with his brothers Frank and L.E. in 1906 — three young men who arrived as Oklahoma became a state and oil began flowing out of the ground in the Bartlesville and Tulsa fields. Frank and L.E. founded Phillips Petroleum Company (later Phillips 66) in 1917; Waite struck out on his own at the same time and built Waite Phillips Company independently, selling it to Standard Oil in 1925 for what was reportedly $25 million — an enormous fortune for the time.

By 1927, Phillips was 44 years old, semi-retired, and looking to build a Tulsa home worthy of his new fortune. He commissioned Kansas City architect Edward Buehler Delk to design Villa Philbrook on a 23-acre tract of farmland on the southern edge of what was then suburban Tulsa. The villa was completed in 1927 at a cost of roughly $1.2 million — about $22 million in today's dollars — and the Phillips family moved in that same year. The building has 72 rooms, 30,000+ square feet of interior space, and original detailing of imported marble, hand-painted ceilings, gilded plasterwork, and frescoes executed by Italian artisans brought to Tulsa specifically for the project.

The Phillips family lived in the villa for only ten years. In 1938, with his children grown and the family preparing to leave Tulsa for cattle ranches in northern New Mexico, Waite Phillips donated the villa, all 23 acres of gardens, an additional $100,000 endowment, and his initial art collection to the City of Tulsa to be operated as a public museum. The donation was made during the Great Depression and was the largest private philanthropic gift in Oklahoma history at the time.

Villa Philbrook is American Renaissance Revival at its most disciplined: Edward Buehler Delk modeled the villa specifically on the great houses of 16th-century Florence and Lucca, with strict adherence to Italian proportions, materials, and detailing. The exterior is Indiana limestone with a low-pitched terracotta roof; the central tower rises 40 feet over the main entry; arcaded loggias on the south-facing elevation open the building to the gardens.

The interior is the building's marquee feature. The Great Hall on the ground floor has a polished marble floor, an elaborate hand-painted ceiling, and a 16-foot-high stained-glass window depicting Saint George and the Dragon. The original library retains its English oak paneling, secret hidden doors built into the walls, and a fireplace mantel imported from a 17th-century English manor house. The dining room seats 24 and has frescoed walls executed by Italian craftsmen on-site in 1927. The original kitchens, butler's pantry, and servants' quarters have been preserved largely intact.

The Phillips family's private quarters on the upper floors — bedrooms, dressing rooms, and a music room — are now used as galleries but retain their original architectural features. Walking through the villa is unlike walking through a purpose-built museum: every room feels like part of a coherent grand house rather than a converted institutional space.

The 23-acre gardens were designed by Tulsa landscape architect Wells Bones in three formal terraces stepping down from the south elevation of the villa toward Crow Creek. The design is European in influence — explicit references to the Villa d'Este near Rome and the Villa Lante in Bagnaia — but adapted to the Oklahoma climate and the specific terrain of the Crow Creek ravine.

The upper terrace contains the formal Italian parterre garden with strict geometric beds of seasonal flowers, a central reflecting pool, and a tempietto (a small classical pavilion) at the far end framing the view. The middle terrace is more relaxed, with mature trees, sculpture, and curving paths. The lower terrace runs down to the creek itself, with more natural plantings and a small waterfall.

The gardens are at their best in spring (April–early May) when the tulips, dogwoods, and azaleas peak, and in autumn (mid-October through early November) when the maples and oaks turn. They are free with museum admission, and many Tulsa residents come back repeatedly across a single year just to walk the gardens through the seasons.

The Philbrook collection has grown from Waite Phillips' initial 1938 gift to roughly 16,000 works across multiple cultures and centuries. The collection is organized into six permanent areas: American art (with strong holdings in the Hudson River School, Western art, and 20th-century works), European art (including paintings, decorative arts, and a notable collection of 17th-century Italian works), Native American art (one of the strongest collections in the Plains region), African art, contemporary art, and Asian art.

Standouts on permanent display include Thomas Moran's enormous landscape paintings of the American West, multiple works by Robert Henri and the Ashcan School, a Hudson River School room anchored by Albert Bierstadt and Asher Durand, and a remarkable Italian Baroque collection that Phillips himself began assembling. The Native American collection is housed in a purpose-built wing added in the 1980s and includes work by both historic and contemporary Indigenous artists, with particular strength in pottery, basketry, and textiles from Plains, Southwest, and Woodland nations.

The museum runs an active contemporary program with rotating exhibitions four to six times per year, frequently featuring artists with Oklahoma or Tulsa connections alongside major touring shows. Recent years have brought traveling exhibitions of Yayoi Kusama, Kehinde Wiley, and major historical surveys.

Plan two to three hours minimum to do Philbrook justice — one hour for the gardens, one to two hours for the villa and galleries, and time for the café. The museum café is genuinely good (not the standard mediocre museum food), serving an updated American lunch menu that is worth a meal on its own; the dining room overlooks the upper garden terrace. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday 9am to 5pm, closed Monday and Tuesday, with $12 adult admission ($7 students and seniors, free for visitors under 18 and active military).

Audio tours and guided architecture tours are included with admission and worth taking — they reveal details about Phillips' choices and the craftsmen who executed the villa that the gallery wall text doesn't cover. The architecture tour runs Wednesday through Sunday at 11am and 2pm and lasts about an hour. The garden tour runs seasonally (April through October) on Saturdays.

Photography is permitted in the gardens and most galleries (no flash, no tripods). The villa and grounds are wheelchair-accessible on the main public routes; the upper villa floors are accessed by an interior elevator. The gift shop carries the standard art-museum mix plus a good selection of books on the Phillips family, Tulsa Art Deco architecture, and Plains Native American culture.

Philbrook runs an active calendar of evening events that draws Tulsa's cultural crowd. The annual Philbrook Wonderland holiday light display fills the gardens with installations from Thanksgiving through New Year's; tickets are timed-entry and sell out weeks in advance. Second Saturday is a year-round monthly free-admission day funded by community sponsors — a great no-cost option for visitors flexible on timing. Summer Wednesdays bring after-hours "Pour Wednesday" cocktail evenings with live music in the gardens.

Membership is the best value for repeat visitors: $50/year for individual unlimited admission, plus reciprocal admission to several dozen other American museums via the North American Reciprocal Museum program. A single ticket plus the architecture tour, lunch in the café, and an unhurried garden walk easily fills a half day; members typically come back multiple times per year for fresh exhibitions and seasonal garden changes.

Philbrook also operates a satellite location, Philbrook Downtown, in the Tulsa Arts District at 116 East Mathew Brady Street. It is a smaller space focused on contemporary and rotating exhibitions, with shorter hours and lower admission ($5 or free with Philbrook membership). The downtown location pairs naturally with a visit to Cain's Ballroom, the Woody Guthrie Center, or Greenwood Rising for an Arts District–focused day.