OKC museum celebrating 80th anniversary with art by Rembrandt, Chihuly and Ansel Adams

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art team is opening up the vault as the downtown OKC landmark launches its yearlong 80th anniversary celebration.

The storied Sooner State institution also will be marking the milestone with a revamped showcase for its signature Dale Chihuly glass art collection, a traveling exhibition highlighting photographer Ansel Adams and a major retrospective of works by influential painter Paul Reed .

The festivities will start with "From the Vault: The 80th Anniversary Exhibition," which will be on view Feb. 8 through April 27 on the museum's third floor.

Here's what art lovers should know about the Oklahoma City Museum of Art's 80th anniversary celebration:

How is the OKC Museum of Art showing more of its collection?

The OKC Museum of Art traces its roots to early statehood efforts of the Oklahoma Art League and the Art Renaissance Club, organizations focused on providing art education to the young city. More formal efforts began with a Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration Experimental Gallery that was open to the public.

The museum transitioned from a federally funded gallery to a private institution when it was incorporated May 18, 1945. Following a split in the 1960s, the current institution grew from the merger of the Oklahoma Art Center and the Oklahoma Museum of Art.

After the COVID-19 pandemic derailed many of its 75th anniversary plans in 2020 , museum President and CEO Michael Anderson said staff and leadership are planning a significant celebration in 2025 for its 80th anniversary.

"This will be the year that we have more of our collection out than any other year in recent memory, especially during the spring," Anderson told The Oklahoman.

"When we have our 'From the Vault' exhibition on view, we're going to more than double the number of works from our collection on view. Then, about a month after that opens, the Chihuly reinstallation will reopen."

'From the Vault' exhibit to feature art by Georgia O'Keeffe, Rembrandt van Rijn and more

Featuring more than 150 works that have either never been displayed or have not been on view in the past five years, "From the Vault: The 80th Anniversary Exhibition" will showcase the depth and strengths of the museum's permanent collection.

Highlighting a wide range of artistic styles and media, the exhibit will include some of the museum's most recent, never-before-displayed acquisitions, including works by Preston Singletary and Georgia O'Keeffe .

"From the Vault" also will feature works by Oklahoma-based artists like Oscar Brousse Jacobson , Emilio Amero, Nan Sheets , and Jonathan Hils as well as hidden gems and rarely seen works by world-renowned artists like Rembrandt van Rijn , Käthe Kollwitz, Frederic Remington , Thomas Hart Benton, George Wesley Bellows , Edward Hopper, Alfred Stieglitz , Carlos Mérida, Mary Cassatt , Alfredo Zalce, and more.

"This exhibition will highlight the various paths that our collection has followed the past 80 years," Anderson said in an email. "We hope the community feels a sense of ownership in the museum, a sense of belonging, and that we all consider what we'll leave behind as our collective legacy for the next 80 years."

How is the OKC Museum of Art team reimagining the popular Chihuly exhibit?

Home to one of the largest public collections of Chihuly's art in the world, the downtown OKC museum closed "Chihuly Then and Now: The Collection at Twenty," featuring five decades of glass and painting by the art icon, in January.

A revamped version of the exhibit, including some works that have been off view for the past few years, will reopen March 8 as "Dale Chihuly: The Oklahoma Collection" on the museum's first floor.

"Our Museum of Art's Chihuly collection has been a foundational element of the museum since its downtown relocation, and the lobby piece is a signature one for our city," said OKC Mayor David Holt in a statement to The Oklahoman.

"The Chihuly collection in OKC is truly one of the finest in the world, and I commend the museum for working to ensure that it remains cutting edge."

Also in spring, the museum will open two smaller "pocket shows" for its 80th anniversary commemoration: A selection of pieces from the Rose Family Glass Collection , a major collection of glass art gifted to the museum a few years ago, and a showcase of works by Luis Jiménez (1940-2006), a Chicano sculptor who also created numerous works on paper, with the museum boasting many of those in its collection .

How is the OKC museum focusing on the works of Ansel Adams in summer 2025?

In summer, the museum will focus on America's most well-known photographer with the traveling exhibit "Discovering Ansel Adams."

The exhibit will feature more than 100 photographs that share the most celebrated works by Adams (1902-1984), while revealing aspects of his development that are frequently overlooked.

Along with rare archival materials, photographs in this large special exhibition will span Adams' entire career, from small, one-of-a-kind prints from his teenage years to a set of mural-sized prints showcasing some of his most famous views.

Organized by the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, with the support of The Museum Box, "Discovering Ansel Adams" will be on view June 7-Sept. 28 at the OKC Museum of Art .

"It's the 50th anniversary of the Center for Creative Photography , so that's not our collection. But it is a incredible traveling show ... and it's not one that we were going to pass on. It's a great opportunity for us," Anderson said.

In the fall, the OKC Museum of Art will debut a retrospective of works by Paul Reed (1919-2015) , an original member of the Washington Color School Painters, a group of abstract artists who experimented with unique paint application techniques.

In 2017, the museum received a gift from the Paul and Esther Reed Trust of 125 paintings, sculptures, drawings and more by Reed. The gift made the OKC Museum of Art the home of one of the largest public collections of the influential painter's work .

"It's an exhibition that we are organizing here, from a collection that is one of our larger collections of any one artist. So, we're doing that as part of the 80th anniversary. ... That will have a lot of outside loans, and we're producing a catalog. So, that's a huge undertaking for the museum," Anderson said.

"We're really trying to highlight the breadth and the eclectic and diverse nature of the collection through these installations."

For more information, go to https://www.okcmoa.com .

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC Museum of Art celebrating 80th anniversary this year: What to know