Woodrow “Woody” Wilson Crumbo was orphaned at the age of seven and spent ten years living with first one family and then another before graduating from Chilocco Indian School (1930) and receiving a degree from the American Indian Institute in Kansas (1934). Performing and teaching Indian dances provided his income, in addition to preserving many tribal ceremonies. It was at the University of Oklahoma (1936-1938) where he studied with Oscar Jacobson and taught the first classes in jewelry-making offered at the institution, specializing in silversmithing. He invented and holds the patents on jewelry-making tools. He was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior in 1939 to paint murals on Interior Department building walls in Washington, D.C. From 1945 to mid-1948, he was employed by Thomas Gilcrease to assemble an American Indian art collection and, from 1948-1962, lived in Taos, New Mexico, where much of his major work was completed, including his most famous oil painting, “Spotted Wolf’s Last Request.” From 1960 to 1974 he directed the El Paso, Texas, Museum of Art. He returned to Oklahoma in 1974 to work and helped build the Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center in Shawnee and he developed his technique to silk screen etchings and prints. His artwork is held in collections at numerous museums including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.