Outré West: The American School of Architecture from Oklahoma to California is a fascinating new exhibition that opened in late August at the award-winning Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center in Oklahoma City.

Outré West explores the work of numerous renowned “outsider architects,” including Bruce Goff and Herb Greene, with ties to the University of Oklahoma’s (OU) groundbreaking American School of Architecture in the 1950’s and 60’s. As teachers, Goff and Greene brought their pioneering ideas of client-centered individualism and experimentation in design to OU long before such ideas became mainstream. 

Outré West: A New Exhibit on "Outsider Architects"

Outré West: The American School of Architecture from Oklahoma to California is a fascinating new exhibition that opened in late August at the award-winning Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center in Oklahoma City. We were recently joined by exhibition curators and professors of architecture at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Angela Person and Dr. Stephanie Pilat, to chat about the exhibition.

These teachers and their students, including Mickey Muennig, Violeta Autumn, Donald MacDonald, and John Marsh Davis, and others, went on to found unconventional architectural practices that brought many iconic structures to California, including the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the fantastical pavilion for Japanese Art on the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles, among hundreds of others.

The exhibition will be on display through January 27, 2025, and features room-sized architectural reconstructions, original architectural drawings and models, press clippings, and large-scale photographs to showcase these architects and their extraordinary artistic innovations.

We were recently joined by exhibition curators and professors of architecture at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Angela Person and Dr. Stephanie Pilat, to chat about the exhibition.