The Matzene project on which we have been working on for the past four years is finally coming to fruition. Royal Nepal 1930: Photographs by Richard Gordon Matzene will be on exhibit at the Ponca City Art Center from September 6 to October 4, 2009. The opening reception will be on Sunday, September 13, 2009, and will include a lecture by
Dr. David S. Shields, McClintock Professor at the University of South Carolina, one of our country’s foremost scholars on early 20th century portrait photography.

Background: The photographs, owned by the City of Ponca City, were discovered under a table at Marland Grand Home by Sandy Graves a number of years ago and are now stored at the Library. Since the portraits were not identified, I asked Marcella Sirhandi, Oklahoma State University Professor of Art History, with a specialty in south Asian art, to research the identities, biographies, iconography of official dress and culturally relevant information related to the portraits. Sirhandi received a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council to travel to Nepal in July, 2007 to do research at the royal palace and archives in Katmandu. She returned with all the photographs identified and copies of photographs taken by Matzene not in the City’s collection.

Marcella Sirhandi has written essays about the photographs and Gordon Matzene which are being published along with the photographs in a hard back book due out this summer.

The photographs are now being framed at no cost to the City due to the generosity of ConocoPhillips, Fred and Suzanne Boettcher, Patricia Evans, John McNeese, and Tom and Sherry Muchmore.

Oklahoma State University is underwriting the cost of bringing Dr. Shields to Ponca City. He will lecture the following day at the University.

These photographs, now researched and documented, will be a significant addition to the City’s art collection.