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All the United States Oklahoma Tulsa Woody Guthrie Center

Woody Guthrie Center

A museum packed with instruments, lyrics, and other mementos of the American folk icon.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

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Kerry Wolfe
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Woody Guthrie Center.   Daniel Jeffries
Woody Guthrie Center.   RJ Walters
Inside the Woody Guthrie Center.   Austin Hudson
  cait7911 / Atlas Obscura User
  cait7911 / Atlas Obscura User
Displays include handwritten lyrics, such as “Ingrid Bergman,” lyrics that were set to music by Billy Bragg for the Mermaid Avenue sessions.   ianlefk / Atlas Obscura User
  Collector of Experiences / Atlas Obscura User
Woody Guthrie’s original lyrics to “This Land is Your Land.”   Sheila Scarborough
Woody Guthrie Center.   Peter Greenberg
The Woody Guthrie Center also contains the archives of Woody’s songs, including those used to record the Mermaid Avenue sessions.   ianlefk / Atlas Obscura User
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About

It’s hard to pass by this otherwise seemingly ordinary brick building without catching your eye on the enormous mural covering part of a wall. Painted underneath the lyrics of one of the most famous American folk songs, an image of an equally iconic musician strums a guitar bearing his signature inflammatory message. 

The center is dedicated to Woody Guthrie, the celebrated American singer who penned hundreds of folk and political tunes. A fiercely dedicated social activist, he frequently played with the saying “this guitar kills fascists” boldly stuck onto his guitar.

Stroll through this museum and you’ll find Guthrie’s old instruments, papers covered in his thoughts and lyrics—including his original lyrics to “This Land is Your Land”—and a trove of other musical treasures. All these artifacts help tell the story of the social and political themes Guthrie so passionately wove into his work.

The building also houses the Woody Guthrie Archives, the world’s largest collection of material related to the artist. Though this area isn’t open to the general public, windows within the main museum let people take a peek into the room. More lyrics, manuscripts, books, musical recordings, and more fill the special climate-controlled space.

The center also houses the Phil Ochs archives. The singer's daughter donated them in 2014, as her father had been influenced by Guthrie’s social activism.

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Music Music History Museums Museums And Collections Collections

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Kerry Wolfe

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Collector of Experiences, cait7911, ianlefk

  • Collector of Experiences
  • cait7911
  • ianlefk

Published

May 11, 2018

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Woody Guthrie Center
102 E Mathew B. Brady St
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
36.158646, -95.992241
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