Johnie Powelson Griffin, ca. 1917

In honor of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum’s 75th anniversary, the Museum is planning a major exhibition of the Johnie Griffin Collection for 2008. The exhibition will occur in the Foran Galleries with ancillary exhibitions in the furniture and textile galleries. Johnie Griffin of Wichita Falls and Brownsville, Texas, and Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, began donating several pieces of Taos art in the mid-1950s until her death in 1962. Born in Kansas, Griffin married into a ranching family based near Wichita Falls, Texas, then purchased homes at Brownsville and Ranchos de Taos in 1944 or 1945. She renovated the Ranchos house with architectural elements purchased from various decrepit or crumbling buildings in northern New Mexico. Griffin’s Wichita Falls and Brownsville home were Spanish Revival in style. She filled the home with European furniture and paintings as well as fine and decorative art, textiles, and furniture from the American Southwest and Mexico, including Hispanic religious art. Griffin commissioned well-known photographer Laura Gilpin to photograph all three homes, inside and out. While she knew most Taos artists and visited their studios often, Griffin held noon dinners at her Ranchos home at which the most frequent guests were Andrew Dasburg, Joseph and Mabel Fleck, Ward and Clyde Lockwood, and Tinka Fechin. Other visitors included Dorothy Brett, Frieda Lawrence, Gisella Loeffler, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Eve Young-Hunter. Consequently, Griffin amassed a collection by Brett, E. I. Couse, Dasburg, W. Herbert