Woody Guthrie Center

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma — a small Creek County town about 90 minutes south of Tulsa. His father Charley was a local politician and amateur musician; his mother Nora suffered from undiagnosed Huntington's disease (the same hereditary illness that would eventually kill Woody) and was institutionalized when Woody was a teenager. His sister Clara died in a house fire when Woody was seven. The combination of family tragedy and small-town Oklahoma poverty during the Great Depression shaped almost every song he later wrote.

Guthrie left Oklahoma in 1937 during the Dust Bowl, riding freight trains and hitchhiking to California with hundreds of thousands of other displaced Plains farmers. He worked his way through California performing in migrant camps, playing on Los Angeles radio, and writing the Dust Bowl Ballads (his first recorded album, released 1940). The Dust Bowl Ballads documented the actual experience of Okies — the term for displaced Oklahoma migrant workers — and made Guthrie the unofficial musical voice of the most desperate American population of the 1930s.

In 1940 Guthrie moved to New York and joined the developing left-wing folk-music scene around Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and the Almanac Singers. He wrote "This Land Is Your Land" in February 1940 as a direct response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which Guthrie found cloying. The song was not released commercially until 1951 and became one of the most-recorded songs in American history. Guthrie continued writing prolifically — an estimated 3,000 songs total — until Huntington's disease ended his ability to perform in the mid-1950s. He died in 1967.

The Woody Guthrie Archives held at the Center represent essentially everything Guthrie left behind that the family was able to preserve. The most-viewed item is a small framed display of the original handwritten lyrics to "This Land Is Your Land," written in pencil on a hotel stationery sheet dated February 23, 1940. Guthrie scratched out and rewrote multiple lines, including the famous verse about the relief office that is often omitted from radio versions of the song. Seeing the original manuscript is a small experience that resonates after.

The center also rotates display of original lyrics to other Guthrie songs — "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Pastures of Plenty," "Roll On Columbia," and many less-famous works. Many of the 3,000+ archived song lyrics were never recorded; the music has been lost or never existed in the first place (Guthrie often wrote lyrics first and intended to set them to existing folk melodies). Several contemporary musicians — including Billy Bragg, Wilco, the Klezmatics, and Jonatha Brooke — have visited the archive and set previously unrecorded Guthrie lyrics to new music, producing albums under the Mermaid Avenue series and related projects.

Guthrie's paintings and drawings are also on display — he was a serious visual artist who left behind thousands of works in pen, ink, and watercolor. Many of the paintings are portraits of fellow musicians, political figures, and migrant farm workers; some are landscapes and abstract works. The visual art is less famous than the music but is genuinely interesting on its own terms.

The Center's exhibits trace Guthrie's influence forward through the next three generations of American songwriting. Bob Dylan, born in Minnesota in 1941, read Guthrie's autobiography Bound for Glory as a teenager and was so taken with Guthrie that he changed his name from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan partly in tribute. Dylan moved to New York at age 19 specifically to meet Guthrie, who by then was hospitalized with Huntington's in New Jersey. Dylan's first album in 1962 includes "Song to Woody," a direct tribute. The 2022 opening of the Bob Dylan Center next door makes the Guthrie-Dylan connection physically immediate.

Bruce Springsteen credits Guthrie as a primary influence on his songwriting and recorded "This Land Is Your Land" extensively on tour through the 1980s and 1990s — including a famous version with Pete Seeger at Barack Obama's 2009 pre-inaugural concert. Springsteen has visited the Tulsa center multiple times and donated material to the archive.

Beyond Dylan and Springsteen, the lineage of singers who cite Guthrie as a direct influence includes Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Bob Marley (via the protest tradition), Billy Bragg, Wilco, Steve Earle, the Indigo Girls, Anais Mitchell, and contemporary artists like Hozier and Brandi Carlile. The Woody Guthrie Center's program of contemporary songwriter residencies brings working musicians to Tulsa to engage with the archive directly — many of the resulting songs and recordings are presented in the center's auditorium.

The Bob Dylan Center opened in May 2022 directly adjacent to the Woody Guthrie Center on Reconciliation Way and shares a single Arts District block. The Dylan Center is built around the Bob Dylan Archive — over 100,000 items including unreleased recordings, original manuscripts of songs and unpublished writings, photographs, films, and Dylan's personal collection of musical instruments. It is the largest single artist archive in popular music history.

The Dylan Archive came to Tulsa in 2016 under similar circumstances to the Guthrie Archive: George Kaiser Family Foundation outbid New York and Los Angeles institutions for the right to be the permanent home. The Dylan Center is roughly three times the size of the Woody Guthrie Center and uses considerably more interactive technology — touchscreen exploration of the archive, immersive video installations of Dylan's recording sessions, and a continuous-loop screening room for film projects related to his work.

A combination ticket to both centers is $24 for adults and is the recommended option for any music-history visitor with two to three hours. The two centers pair naturally — start with Guthrie, who is the source material, and then move to Dylan, who absorbed and transformed it. Together they make Tulsa, improbably, the most important folk-and-protest-music destination in the United States.

The center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm, closed Mondays. Admission is $12 for adults, $8 for students, seniors, and military, and free for visitors under 17. Combination tickets with the Bob Dylan Center are $24 adults and represent a substantial savings if you plan to do both. Tickets are available at the door; advance online purchase at woodyguthriecenter.org is recommended for weekend visits during peak tourism season.

The center is roughly 12,000 square feet and a typical visit takes 60 to 90 minutes. The exhibit design is conventional museum format — display cases, wall text, and listening stations — punctuated by an immersive multimedia introduction at the entrance and a small theater that runs documentary films on rotation. The center hosts a robust events program: songwriter residencies, concerts in the small auditorium (capacity around 100), educational workshops, and an annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival held in Okemah every July.

The center is wheelchair-accessible throughout. Parking is available in the Tulsa Arts District public garage two blocks south on Cameron Street; a small surface lot adjacent to the center has limited spots and is generally reserved for staff. The Cain's Ballroom, Greenwood Rising, and the Bob Dylan Center are all within a 5-minute walk, and most downtown Tulsa hotels (Mayo, Tulsa Club, Hyatt, Hampton) are within a 10-minute walk.