Acee Blue Eagle

From NativeWiki

Acee Blue Eagle (Alex McIntosh; Chebon Ah Bu Lah, Laughing Boy; Lumhee Holattee, Blue Eagle) Creek-Pawnee, (August 7,1909 - June 18, 1959)

Born near Anadarko, Oklahoma, into the Mcintosh family, a family which has given the Creek tribe of Oklahoma many of it's Chiefs. After the deaths of his parents, and then his grandparents, he lived in Henryetta, Oklahoma with his guardian. He attended Nuyaka Indian School near Bristow, Oklahoma between 1916 and 1922. He later attended Haskell Institute in Lawrence Kansas and Chilocco Indian School 1925-1928. In 1931 he studied at the University of Oklahoma School of Fine Arts. Acee joined the Work Projects Administration (WPA) Public Works of Art Project, painting murals in the early 1930s. He painted murals for the Coalgate Post Office, Central State College at Edmund, Oklahoma College for Women at Chickasha, the Carnegie Library in Muskogee, and the Seminole Post Office. Some of these murals are still preserved in Oklahoma. One of Acee's murals was in the dining hall of the USS Oklahoma, destroyed at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

In 1935, Blue Eagle was invited to give a series of lectures on American Indian art at Oxford University in England, and he took Europe by storm. Returning to the United States, he established the Art Department at Bacone College in 1935, and directed the program until 1938. Blue Eagle gained worldwide fame during his lifetime, and his flat style paintings hang in private and public galleries all over the world. During the 1950s, he had a television show for children on a Tulsa-Muskogee station. He was elected into the Indian Hall of Fame, Who's Who of Oklahoma, and the International Who's Who. He was chosen Outstanding Indian in the United States in 1958. Blue Eagle served in the United States Air Corps during World War II. He died in 1959, and is buried in the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.