TULSA, Okla. — Young art students - 38 of them - from Pea Ridge Intermediate School, along with their teacher John McGee, made the annual fifth-grade Arts Tour of Tulsa last week.

In a yearly event that began in 2005, students in their last year of elementary school took the trip to view the art on display at the Gilcrease Museum of American Art as well as the Philbrook Museum. Though lacking the time to thoroughly explore the expansive displays at either musuem, students were treated to guided tours by docents who took them around to highlights of the mueums, explaining the history, motivation and effort into each piece of art on display.

The group first took in the Gilcrease where they were conducted on a guided tour of the American West. The Gilcrease has the largest collection of American art in the United States, a collection that was built with the fortune of Thomas Gilcrease, a man of Indian heritage who owned 160 acres of land in the center of the Glenpool oil discovery. The oil find made Gilcrease a multi-millionaire when he was 21 yearsold and he eventually decided to use his wealth to acquire and preserve American art and the history of the west.

The Philbrook Museum has a similar origin as the Phillips family of oil fame created the Philbrook on their family estate in the Brookside community of Tulsa. Besides holding an extensive art collection from around the world, the museum has a very large garden and grounds for students to explore behind the main building.

In between their tours of the two museums, the students spent an hour at Tulsa’s Riverside Park,a modern park and recreation complex beside the Arkansas River on 41st Street. The Pea Ridge students then finished their day with dinner and recreation at the Incredible Pizza establishment adjacent to the Woodland Hills Mall in south Tulsa.

The trip to Tulsa was made at minimal expense to the school as the art teacher drove the bus at no charge and the Gilcrease Museum will reimburse the school for the fuel expended in the journey to Tulsa.

“Both museums have programs to encourage school groups from faraway to come to their facilities,” McGee said. “It is a part if their mission.”

“Most of the students who went interacted quite well with the guides, both in answering questions as well as offering some of their own,” McGee said. “This was the first opportunity for most of them, if not all of them, to see actually up close and personal, what a masterwork of art looks like.”

Students on the trip had qualified for the journey by earning “Hall of Fame” status on the schools online art gallery at www.artsonia.com/pearidge2.

Sports, Pages 8 on 06/01/2011