A Day at the Philbrook is Exactly What You Need

When I was twenty years old, I lived in the house on the left in this photo:

This house, known as Casa Artom and owned by Wake Forest University, my alma mater, is where my love affair with art began. That was due in large part to the fact that the building on the right of this photo is the Collezione di Peggy Guggenheim, with which my house shared a small rooftop terrace and to which we had unlimited free passes.

I was a junior in college and spending the fall semester of 2000 in Venice, Italy. While most of my fellow Demon Deacons took the opportunity of a fantastic location and three-day weekends to traipse all over the Continent, I preferred to remain mostly in town, wandering down calle after calle and getting lost in that art-on-the-water maze of a city. But I also spent many an afternoon sitting in front of the works of Picasso, Pollock, and (my favorite) Miró, staring into abstract artworks and writing in my journal. In our classes that semester, we learned all about Venetian Renaissance Art from Agnese Chiari and her mentor, Terisio Pignatti, both world-renowned authorities on the subject.

Flash forward nearly two decades, to when Jeff Martin, communications manager at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, asked me if I'd like to participate in the Me Time Monday program, in which one person gets the entire museum to him- or herself for a day. The Philbrook is closed to visitors on Mondays and Tuesdays and, though the staff is working, there is almost no one there.

I immediately cried out, "YES!" and we scheduled a day for me to come to Tulsa. Jeff laid out a few rules (no food in the galleries, for example) and then turned me loose to enjoy the day.

I started in the villa's Italian Room, where I took some time for quiet meditation in front of one of the Philbrook's newest acquisitions, Equestrian Portrait of King Phillip IV by the amazing Kehinde Wiley:

In honor of my raisin', so to speak, I moved along to the gallery holding the Italian Renaissance works, including several pieces with Venetian provenance:

And then upstairs to visit some of my favorite works in the museum, including this tiny Picasso:

And some truly beautiful black-and-white photographs by Lusha Nelson, including this one of Mary Taylor (later Mary Zimbalist):

There's something so deeply satisfying about staring into a piece of art for minutes at a time. It's at once meditative and inspiring, a truly transcendent experience, and I got to do it again and again throughout these galleries with no one else coming through and making me feel like I should move along so they could take a turn. I gazed into gorgeous landscapes by Thomas Moran, works of African tribal art, and Native American pieces all morning.

But as anyone who's visited knows, the inside of the Philbrook is only a part of the story. So with the day halfway over already, I ordered a sandwich from Trencher's Delicatessen and made my way down to the Philbrook's unbelievable gardens:

With my sandwich, drink, and laptop, I posted up in the gorgeous Slumgullion (The Venerate Outpost) cabin by artist Karl Unnasch:

There, I answered emails and Facebook messages, did some work, and listened to music while eating my Dutch Crunch sandwich from Trencher's. The light in the cabin is mysterious and gorgeous, created by the cabin's roof, which is made of resin-treated textiles that allow light—but not the elements—to come through. Between that and the enthusiastic air conditioner in the cabin, it was a gorgeous and temperate way to spend a productive two hours.

But soon, the elements started calling. I packed up my stuff, stashed it away, and took off for a walk through the gardens, where I made many a friend.

Soon, however, I sat down at one end of the pond and just stared up at the Italianate villa that is Philbrook. I sat, I stared, I thought, I breathed, I took it all in. Because this place, too, is its own work of art, with its own story to tell.

You may never have this entire place to yourself. Certainly, I never will again; this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for which I'm unbelievably grateful. But you'd be remiss not to visit Philbrook for yourself this summer. Roam the gardens, hang out in the cabin, be inspired by this Oklahoma treasure. You'll get in the car to drive home feeling lighter, like someone has finally opened the windows and let the fresh air in.