Woodrow Wilson Crumbo

Woodrow Wilson Crumbo, better known as Woody Crumbo, was a Potawatomi artist born in Lexington, Oklahoma, in 1912. Orphaned as a young child, he lived with various families in the region before beginning his studies in art at the Chilocco Indian Agriculture School at the age of 17. During this time, Crumbo also began to play the cedarwood flute. He earned a scholarship to attend Wichita University, where he studied from 1933 to 1936 with Swedish muralist Olle Nordmark and watercolorist Clayton Staples. In 1936, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study with painter Oscar Jacobson for two years. During that time, Crumbo began touring the country as a professional flute player and dancer and performed at reservations where he learned and shared traditional dances. From 1938 to 1941, he served as Director of Art at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In 1939, he was invited to paint a series of murals in the eighth-floor penthouse at the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C., together with Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser, Navajo painter Gerald Nailor, and Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera. Shortly thereafter, he curated an exhibition of Native American art at the Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the 1950s, Crumbo took up prospecting with a fellow artist and found deposits of beryllium worth millions of dollars. From 1960 to 1967, he served as assistant director of the El Paso Museum of Art, and then as its director in 1968. Throughout his career, Crumbo promoted Native American art, petitioned for federal recognition of Native tribes, and donated money to Native causes.