Company Profile
Osage Nation Museum
Company Overview
It is the mission of the Osage Nation Museum (ONM) to foster the education of the public about the history, culture, and artistic expressions of the Osage people by preserving and developing collections as well as through exhibitions and educational programs that nurture creativity and encourage active learning.
Company History
Established in 1938, the Osage Nation Museum (ONM) is the oldest tribally-governed museum in the United States and a beloved symbol of Osage culture to the people. Built of local sandstone, the ONM is situated on the Osage Nation main campus in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. In 1874, the original building served as a chapel then later dormitory for the Osage Boarding School. More than sixty years later, Osage Tribal Councilman and writer John Joseph Mathews championed an effort to renovate the structure to serve as a central repository for the art, artifacts, material culture, and other resource material related to the history of the Osage. Under Mathew’s direction and the leadership of Chief Fred Lookout, the Osage Museum opened through a grant from President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. The ONM Permanent Collection is comprised of more than 9,000 objects including works of art, artifacts, and ethnographic and archival material. In 1927 the Osage Council purchased the collection of John L. Bird, a trader who began collecting Osage material around 1883. The Bird collection forms the nucleus of the permanent collection and has expanded over the decades to include distinct collections of Henry Pratt, W.B. Mathis, Lee Wilcox, Tamara Erikson, and Lilian B. Mathews, among others.