If there is one moment that might sum up Scott Stulen’s efforts to gets Tulsans to look at art — and at the Philbrook Museum of Art — in new ways, it was the day John Lithgow came to town.
The Emmy Award-winning actor, a vocal advocate for arts education, was in town in April 2022, in part to attend the museum’s biennial Wine Experience fundraiser.
“We had ‘The BIG Show’ on display at the time, and I gave him a tour of the exhibit,” Stulen said.
“The BIG Show” was a collection of artworks in all media by Tulsa-area students, ages 4 to 18. Hundreds of images and objects filled the museum’s main Helmerich Exhibition Hall — a place that has showcased works by some of the greatest artists in history.
“(Lithgow) literally had tears running down his face by the time we made it through the show,” Stulen recalled. “He was so touched and overwhelmed by what he saw, all this art made by all these kids.
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“And that is one of those moments that will stay with me,” Stulen said, “not simply because I was with John Lithgow but because that was a show that had a similar impact on a lot of people.”
Stulen, who has served as executive director and CEO of Philbrook for the past eight years, announced last month that he would be leaving the museum to take a similar position with the Seattle Art Museum. He is set to begin his new job Aug. 25.
Stulen said the Seattle museum sought him out.
“I’ve received a lot of inquiries from other institutions, but this was the first one with whom I engaged in the conversation about the job,” he said. “I’ve been very happy at Philbrook and in Tulsa, so it had to be the right job in the right place at the right time.”
Stulen’s final day at Philbrook was July 5, and he took a few moments from packing up his office to look back on his time at the museum.
“When I came to Philbrook (in August 2016), it was my first time to be an executive director,” he said. “I had come from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where I had run a department but not a full museum. So I knew coming in that this was going to be a big jump and that I had a lot to learn, both as a leader and about all the different aspects about how a museum operates.”
Philbrook offered some unique challenges, as it includes the museum’s various collections of art and artifacts as well as some 23 acres of carefully sculpted and maintained grounds, a historic house and a satellite location downtown.
“It’s a pretty complicated, layered institution,” Stulen said. “But that also provided us with a lot of avenues to realize a lot of the core ideas I’ve followed throughout my career.”
Those ideas, Stulen said, center around making sure a museum such as Philbrook is not viewed as “an island unto itself … but was a community-focused institution, a place where everyone felt welcomed.”
Some of the ways Philbrook has implemented this vision were through programs such as “Museum Confidential,” a show and subsequent podcast that gave a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at the museum; providing greater access to the museum grounds for visitors; and making sure there were family-oriented programs every day the museum was open.
The museum also worked to create unique public spaces, such as “Slumgullion (The Venerate Outpost),” the full-scale log cabin designed by artist Karl Unnasch, and Tandy Pavilion, construction of which is set to begin later this summer with a completion date of late 2025.
Midway through Stulen’s tenure at Philbrook came the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered most public spaces.
“I’m so incredibly proud of the staff here and how nimble they were in confronting the challenges we faced,” he said. “The day after we shut down, we had a meeting to discuss how do we keep running, how do we stay relevant and continue to serve the community.
“And I think that, because we had that mission of service and of being a part of this community and city, it helped us through that period,” Stulen said. “We gave tons of food from our gardens to help feed people. We were able to make our garden spaces available to local groups so people could gather safely, and we were able to support local artists when they weren’t able to make a living during that time.”
These and other activities during the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the museum’s mission of community involvement and proving to that community that “a museum is a place that can do a lot of different things,” Stulen said.
While he knows there are programs and projects he would like to realize at Philbrook, he also believes this is a good time for a change to be made.
“I feel like everything is at a good point right now where I can hand it off, that we’ve come to a natural transition point,” Stulen said. “We just got through accreditation; we just finished an update of our strategic plan and got our budgeting done.
“And I know the board and the staff here are committed to the same kind of mission and strategic plan that I’ve laid out here at the museum and that this will be how we go forward,” he said.
As for what he will miss about Philbrook and Tulsa, Stulen said: “We definitely will miss the people and all the friends we’ve made over the years. Our family has grown up in Tulsa, and we’ve developed relationships with so many different elements of the community.
“I’m also going to miss being able to see up close how Tulsa develops,” he said. “I think the city is headed in an exciting direction, and I hope I’ve played some small role in that.
“Tulsa is unusual in that it’s big enough to have these amazing things that get the attention of people through the entire world, but it also feels small enough that you have all these people that you know, so that you could pick up a phone and practically talk to anybody in the city and be able to make good things happen and happen quickly.”
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