Gordon Gilkey Collection, 1968-2021

Gordon W. Gilkey (1912-2000) was a professor in the Art Department and the first dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State College (later Oregon State University), artist, and responsible for removing Nazi war art.

Gilkey was born in 1912 in Scio, Oregon, and attended both Albany College (later Lewis and Clark College) and the University of Oregon, where he received the school’s first master of fine arts degree in printmaking in 1936. Following graduation, Gilkey moved to New York City, following his soon-to-be wife, Vivian Malone (1912-1996), who was a violin student at Juilliard School. While in New York, Gilkey produced the architectural etchings for the 1939 New York World’s Fair and wrote the official book for that event, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

At the beginning of World War II, Gilkey sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt recommending if the United States became involved in the war, there should be knowledgeable people along with the troops to tell them what not to destroy. Roosevelt agreed and the idea led to the creation of the Monuments Men, a corps dedicated to rescuing art stolen by the Nazis.

In early 1945, Gilkey finally was sent to Europe and joined the U.S. War Department Special Staff Art Projects. While doing this work, he was also assigned as the sole member of the Propaganda Confiscation Unit. He was ordered to gather up and remove all Nazi war art, particularly works that furthered militarism and promoted Nazi ideals. Gilkey indexed, catalogued, photographed, and exhibited 103 Nazi oil paintings for Allied servicemen and the press to examine in December 1946, at the Frankfurt Staedel Museum. Ultimately, over 8,000 items, including drawings, watercolors, engravings, paintings, and sculpture, were shipped to the Pentagon for storage.

Following Gilkey’s return to the United States in 1947, he became a professor at Oregon State College (later Oregon State University) and eventually the first dean of its College of Liberal Arts. When he started at Oregon State, there were limited liberal arts classes offered on campus and no majors in any of the core areas of the liberal arts. Gilkey taught many of his classes in improvised art studios, like a former laundry room in Kidder Hall. Gilkey worked to add classes, but the greater struggle was fighting for official recognition of liberal arts majors on campus. Finally, in 1961, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences was established. In 1964, Gilkey became dean and immediately worked to build new majors for OSU students. He added departments one by one over the next decade: English, art, economics, history, political science, speech communications, Russian studies, French, German, music, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, Spanish, and psychology. He also advocated for graduate education in the liberal arts and created study abroad programs in Germany, Japan, France, and Mexico. He curated a rotating print collection exhibit in the Memorial Union building.

After his retirement from Oregon State, Gilkey donated his collection to the Portland Art Museum in 1978, establishing the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts in 1993, and served as curator of prints and drawings at the museum.

Gordon Gilkey died October 28, 2000 in Portland, Oregon.