Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art

The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art sits on the campus of St. Gregory's University and holds a collection considerably more varied and impressive than the city's size would suggest. Founded by Father Gregory Gerrer — a Benedictine monk who trained as an artist in Europe — the museum includes American and European paintings, a collection of Egyptian antiquities (complete with a mummy), pre-Columbian artifacts, and Native American objects.

The painting collection leans toward the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular strength in works from Oklahoma's own history. Gerrer himself painted portraits of several Oklahoma governors and important figures from the territorial era. Admission is modest and the museum is rarely crowded, which makes it an unhurried experience. It is open Tuesday through Saturday.

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The museum's most unexpected exhibit is an Egyptian mummy — one of a small collection of Egyptian antiquities assembled in the early twentieth century by Father Gregory Gerrer, a Benedictine monk who was also an accomplished portrait painter. The combination of Impressionist oils and ancient Egyptian funerary objects in a small Oklahoma city is exactly the kind of incongruity that makes American regional museums worth seeking out.