ART DECO AND THE AMERICAN WEST
NORMAN, OKLA. – “Art Deco and the American West,” the 10th biennial symposium of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma, is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 12, at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., in the OU Arts District.

This daylong event, which marks the Russell Center’s 20th anniversary, will begin at 9 a.m. in the museum’s Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium; it is complimentary and open to the public. Attendees will be treated to presentations on art and architecture created in the American West in the Art Deco style.

Symposium speakers and their topics are:
Carla Breeze,photographer and author of American Art Deco: Architecture and Regionalism, L.A. Deco and Pueblo Deco will discuss the topic: “Pacific Deco.”
Award-winning writers David Bush (executive director, Preservation Houston) and Jim Parsons (programs director, Preservation Houston), Houston, will present jointly on “Texas Deco: Constructing a Modern Identity in the Lone Star State.” Bush and Parsons are the authors of several works on Texas Deco, most recently DFW Deco: Modernistic Architecture of North Texas and Houston Deco: Modernistic Architecture of the Texas Coast.
John Faubion, director, Lawrence Tenney Stevens Trust, Superior, Arizona, will present “Rewriting the History of Cowboy Deco: The Overlooked Contributions of Lawrence Tenney Stevens.”
Mark Andrew White, Ph.D., Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, will speak on “Moderne Thinking: Bruce Goff, Olinka Hrdy, and Tulsa Deco.”

The schedule for the day will include morning and afternoon sessions with a break between to allow participants the opportunity to enjoy the museum’s holdings and lunch on their own.
For further questions, please call the Russell Center at (405) 325-5939.

Founded in 1998, the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West is the first such university-based program in the nation. The center, as an integral part of the OU School of Visual Arts and the OU Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, is dedicated to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge in the field of American art history as it relates to the western United States. Through its resource holdings, national symposia, lecture series, course offerings and outreach programs, the Russell Center actively engages students and the public in developing a better understanding of, and appreciation for, 19th- and 20th-century Euro-American and Native American artistic traditions. Special focus is given to the art of Charles M. Russell and his contemporaries.
For more information on the Russell Center, visit art.ou.edu/russellcenter. For accommodations and further questions, call the Russell Center at (405) 325-5939. For parking inquiries, please contact Parking Services at (405) 325-3311, or go online to ou.edu/parking.
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