BARTLESVILLE, OKLAHOMA.- Richard P. Townsend, Executive Director and CEO of Price Tower Arts Center, has announced that Dennis Oppenheim has offered his collection of architecture-related works to the Arts Center. He also announces the gift by Barbara Jakobson, a prominent New York collector, of a major painting by David Salle and the purchase of a monumental sculpture by famed Pop artist Robert Indiana.

The Oppenheim collection donation begins with 42 scale models that range from his early and important Land Art projects of the 1960s to those for the artist’s large-scale public art commissions of the past decade. Many have been on view in the Arts Center’s exhibition Dennis Oppenheim: Indoors, Outdoors. The acquisition will continue with the gift of other existing models and drawings for these projects, and models and drawings for future public commissions. Drawings will reside in the Arts Center’s Architecture Study Center, and together these works establish a permanent site for the appreciation and study of this important aspect of Dennis Oppenheim’s work.

Mr. Oppenheim was moved to make the donation after visiting the Arts Center for the opening of his exhibition and seeing how the museum explores the intersection of modern art, design and architecture. “Price Tower Arts Center is showing work that moves from conventional sculpture toward something that I feel to be the beginnings of a new sculpture/architecture hybrid,” he states. “I feel that my work is at home here, and I am delighted that it will help this young institution to grow.”

“We were extremely proud that Dennis Oppenheim, a true American master, agreed to be the subject of our recent exhibition, the second in our annual Contemporary Artists Initiative,” stated Mr. Townsend. “Moreover, we are gratified that Dennis recognized the enormous meaning that his architecturally related sculpture would have here and as a result the opportunity we have to educate the public about the integration of architecture with the other arts. Following the legacies of Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff, Dennis Oppenheim’s work in our collection will provide a contemporary point of reference for the understanding of the relationship between art, architecture and design.”

The Arts Center is acquiring the collection on a part gift, part purchase basis, on terms very generously offered by the artist. The collection now joins a number of other major recent acquisitions in contemporary art.

From the first exhibition in the Contemporary Artists Initiative, the 2004 Robert Indiana 66: Paintings and Sculpture, the Arts Center has acquired Mr. Indiana’s monumental outdoor sculpture Sixty-Six (2004), a work in polychromed aluminum that measures 96 x 200 x 48 inches. This unique work, the only one of the artist’s celebrated number sculptures to be created as a double digit, has been purchased with funds provided by the Lyon Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. C.J. Silas, Mr. George R. Kravis II, Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Morris, Mr. and Mrs. Joel Romines, Phillips Petroleum Company by exchange, and others. In creating the sculpture, the celebrated Pop artist explored themes from his boyhood—his father having worked for the Phillips Petroleum Company headquartered in Bartlesville—and was inspired by the Phillips 66 logo as well as the mystique of Route 66.

Another important recent acquisition is the 1980 painting Jim Was Jim (acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 inches) by David Salle, donated by the leading New York collector Barbara Jakobson. Salle, an internationally renowned New York artist who came to prominence in the 1980s, is a native of Oklahoma. Ms. Jakobson recently auctioned other works from her collection at Christie’s New York, with a portion of the proceeds going to fund future acquisitions of The Museum of Modern Art. She is a trustee of MoMA as well as a member of Price Tower Arts Center’s National Advisory Council. The Salle painting will be featured in an upcoming exhibition co-organized with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma in celebration of Oklahoma’s state centennial. The exhibition surveys the work of the major artistic figures who have come from the state over the past forty years, including Salle, Ed Ruscha and Larry Clark.