Show Time Information

• Show 1: Reception starts at 6:30 p.m. and the actual play at 7:00 p.m.
• Show 2: Reception starts at 8:30 p.m. and the actual play at 9:00 p.m.

Tickets

Tickets are $40 each and $75 for two. Send email with contact information or call 405.366.1667 to make your reservation. Space is limited.

Cast

Dr. Andrew Phelan as Oscar Jacobson
Lieneke Mous as Jeanne d'Ucel
Maya Torralba as Lois Smokey
Oliver Plumley as Stephen Mopope
Kevin Connywerdy as Jack Hokeah
Warren Queton as James Auchiah
Robert Lincoln as Monroe Tsatoke
Marty Thurman as Spencer Asah
Linda Coldwell as the Jacobson's Maid, Phoebe
Russ Tall Chief (playwright/director) as the OU Daily Newspaper Reporter, Savoie Ottinville

The Jacobson House, 1930, transports gallery guests back in time to the historic Jacobson House in Norman, OK, during the Spring of 1930. Join Oscar Jacobson and his wife, Jeanne d'Ucel, for a catered reception with the renowned artists known as "The Kiowa Five," to be held at their beautiful home at 609 Chautauqua Avenue. In addition to meeting their special guests, The Kiowa Five, the Jacobsons have also planned an insightful tour of their residence to showcase its distinct architectural design inspired by Jacobson's Swedish heritage.

During the reception, which includes light refreshments, the enigmatic Kiowa artists share their respective compelling stories of personal triumph and tragedy, as well as chronicle their artistic development and careers as the first American Indian artists from Oklahoma to gain international fame in the fine art world. Hear first-hand accounts of the artists' early training at St. Patrick's Mission in Anadarko, OK, where the kind-hearted Father Aloysius Hitta brought the artists' work to the attention of Oscar Jacobson, the respected artist, scholar, and founding director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art.

Listen as Oscar Jacobson and his wife, Jeanne d'Ucel, recall the serendipitous events the led the Kiowa artists to the University of Oklahoma to become the first American Indian art students at the university. Experience the legendary trip to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1928 through the words of Oscar Jacobson and the Kiowa artists as they recount the captivating trip that would prove to be possibly the most important exhibition in the history of Native art.

Do not miss this enchanting event, featuring powerful singing and dancing by this multi-talented group of Kiowa painters. Join us for a journey back nearly 70 years when The Kiowa Five emerged to launch the genesis of contemporary Native art.

Background

The American Indian artists that came to be known as the "Kiowa Five" were actually six artists in total: Spencer Asah (1905 or 1910-1954); Jack Hokeah (1902-1969); Stephen Mopope (1898-1974); and Monroe Tsatoke (1904-1937); and Lois (Bougetah) Smoky (1907-1981), the youngest and only female member of the group, who was later replaced by James Auchiah (1906-1974). These Kiowa artists were members of important families within the tribe and descendants of important chiefs, warriors, and holy men. They were multi-talented artists that were accomplished in dancing, singing, storytelling, flute-making and flute-playing, among other talents. They were coming of age on the reservation when young Kiowas were both firmly rooted in traditional Kiowa culture and ceremony, as well as attending Catholic school, playing basketball, and studying art.

In 1916, as Oscar Brousse Jacobson was teaching launching the University of Oklahoma's new School of Art, Mrs. Susie Ryan Peters began working on the Kiowa reservation as a field matron with the United States Indian Service. Peters was tasked with teaching Kiowa girls how to clean house, to sing patriotic songs, and to make certain to "carefully avoid any unnecessary reference to the fact that they are Indians." Despite her orders, Peters defiantly encouraged the young Kiowas to paint images of Kiowa cultural and ceremonial life. She personally funded private lessons for the young emerging Kiowa artists, which were taught by Mrs. Willie Gaze Lane of Chickasha.

Through Peters efforts, the Kiowa artists were admitted to St. Patrick's Mission School, where Father Aloysius Hitta, known as Father "Al," and Sister Olivia built on their artistic training. Although the artists completed high school, they still lacked the academic prerequisites for college. Thus, Father "Al" personally brought the artists work to the attention of Oscar Jacobson, who was greatly impressed and intrigued by the art. In 1927, Jacobson invited the artists to attend the university as "special students," who would become the first American Indian art students at the university.

With the help of his assistant, Edith Mahier, Jacobson provided the students with studio space, materials, and stipends, although he made little effort to impose concepts and techniques of formalized European art. Jacobson and his wife, Jean D'Ucel, often hosted the Kiowas at their home, located just a few blocks west of the School of Art.

Jacobson maintained that "The art of the Kiowas should not be judged by the 'white' yard stick. They are created from a different radical point of view."  The Kiowa Five gained their first national recognition in 1927 when Jacobson exhibited their work the convention of the American Federation of the Arts in Denver. Then, in 1928, Jacobson organized a traveling exhibition of the Kiowa artists' works, which he sent to the First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Kiowa artists' trip to Europe with Jacobson would prove to be possibly the most important exhibition in the history of Native art. These five young Kiowas, who had left Anadarko, OK, as timid students of art only short time earlier, returned from Europe as world-renowned artists. Jacobson wrote, "I exhibited their works in the most important museums from New York to Hawaii: San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cleveland, where they were received with applause before any notice of them had been taken in Oklahoma."  The exhibition prompted the first major publication of American Indian art, which took the form of a portfolio featuring 30 porchoir by the Kiowa Five, which was published in Nice, France, by Szwedzicki, in 1929.

Although each of the artists of Kiowa Five was new to international fame, Lois Smokey was in a most unusual situation. Kiowa women were traditionally homemakers. Kiowa men typically represented their families in the public view earning honor and prestige. Smokey's success caused much consternation among her people, including some members of Kiowa Five. As a result, shortly after returning from Europe, Smokey stopped painting and returned home to devote herself to her family. Nevertheless, her work is still featured in the 1929 folio.

As the work of the Kiowa Five was exhibited throughout the United States, art critics accustomed to seeing European-influenced art saw the Kiowa art as "fresh, exotic, and truly American."  Directors of art museums would express to Jacobson that the work was the "most startling and significant pieces of work that have appeared on this continent."

As the artists gained proficiency in fresco and oil painting, they were commissioned murals during the WPA to be painted in numerous public buildings around Oklahoma, as well as in Washington, D.C. Among the buildings and artists who painted include: Oklahoma Historical Society Building (Tsatoke and Asah); Federal Building in Muskogee (Mopope and Auchiah); Federal Building in Anadarko (Mopope, Asah, Auchiah); and Ft. Sill Indian School in Lawton (Mopope, Asah, Auchiah, and artists from other tribes), and others.

The Kiowa Five marked the genesis of contemporary Native art as a fine art as well as Native art as a distinctly American art. The art which emerged from this group of determined and passionate Kiowas was a visual memoir of their own religio-cultural experiences, as well as the preservation of the cultural memories of their Kiowa elders of life before the reservation, government schools, and assimilation. While the art of the Kiowa Five is important in its artistic merit, the Kiowa cultural expression preserved in their painting is also vitally important as an archive of Kiowa culture. Kiowa and other American Indian artists that have followed the Kiowa Five to the University of Oklahoma's School of Art continue to preserve the history of contemporary Native art, while also evolving Native art in their own respective artistic voices.

Tickets are available for purchase at the Jacobson House. Call 405.366.1667 to make your reservation. Space is limited..