2024 & 2025 ANNUAL REPORT
2024 & 2025 ANNUAL REPORT
Flying in Formation
Flying in Formation
“It is amazing that in the scheme of nature certain birds should patrol the air, others the fields, others the trees, others the forest-floor, and so on, so that all outdoors is, in a sense, cared for by our feathered friends. It has been said that our very existence depends upon these birds who make it possible for the trees, the flowers, and the grain-fields to grow. And all the while these same creatures are delighting us with their beautiful colors and their cheerful songs.”
GEORGE MIKSCH SUTTON, An Introduction to the Birds of Pennsylvania, 1928
Brant
Flocks of these small sea geese migrate long distances in arctic conditions, symbolizing heroic endurance and triumph.
These birds herald the new hope of spring and symbolize happiness, joy, and good fortune.
Eastern Bluebirds
FROM THE CHAIRMAN
FELLOW ORNITHOLOGISTS AND backyard birders alike treasured Dr. George Miksch Sutton during his lifetime. A keen nature observer, he published his first bird drawing at age eleven, and his enthusiasm for birds never waned.
Thanks to the generosity of our most significant philanthropic partner, Oklahoma City Community Foundation, along with the George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center, we are shining a new light on Dr. Sutton’s watercolors throughout this report.
A longtime professor, Dr. Sutton enthusiastically taught generations of students and beckoned those he encountered to love nature—and life itself—as much as he did. One of his students, Andrew J. Berger, remembered him as a renaissance man, following his curiosity and caring deeply about people. His kindness to animals, as well as his love of art, literature, history, and music,
align with the values of the Kirkpatrick entities.
As we look back on these past two years, Dr. Sutton is a fitting pairing for our own Louisa McCune, longtime Kirkpatrick Foundation executive director, who passed away in 2024. A journalist by training, she, too, was exceptionally bright, interested in absolutely everything, and enamored with her work. Until the end, she strove with all her being for a better world. Everyone in our organization and the greater philanthropic community embraced Louisa, and she will be greatly missed.
The Kirkpatrick entities carry forward the banners first raised by our forebears: to care for one another and build up community. In everything we do, we seek to improve the quality of life for those in our communities—including animals. We are taking Louisa’s mission, to make Oklahoma the safest and most humane place to be an animal, and keeping it in the forefront of our minds.
Among our philanthropies, Kirkpatrick Family Fund and Kirkpatrick Foundation awarded more than $28 million in grants to hundreds of local nonprofits in their past two fiscal years.
The family fund has concentrated efforts in advancing workforce development through arts education. A growing number of studies in neuroscience and other fields are proving the arts to be a powerful tool for transforming individual lives and entire communities. (I recommend Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross.) Meanwhile, the foundation has rallied behind nonprofit journalism outlets that have lost funding in recent years, supporting this critical element of democracy. We also celebrate Kelley Barnes as the foundation’s new executive director, leading with heart and cheer and moving important work forward.
For a new initiative in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, four organizations related to the Kirkpatrick family and Kirkpatrick philanthropies have formed the Arboretum Collaborative with a significant tree collection, considered a “living museum.” Red Ridge Nature Preserve, Park House, Mollie Spencer Farm, and Campbell Art Park (adjacent to Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center) are dedicated to advancing biodiversity and conservation as part of their work.
I’m proud to share that Kirkpatrick Bank celebrated fifty-five years in 2025 and opened a new full-service branch in the Denver Tech Center, complementing our main Colorado bank in Colorado Springs and a specialized office in Boulder. We at Kirkpatrick hold fast to stability and growth, as we have advanced $396 million to individuals and small businesses in the communities we serve. Kirkpatrick Oil Company, meanwhile, rides the fluctuations of market volatility with aplomb through a diversified portfolio and a strong history of hedging commodity risk. In the past two years, Kirkpatrick Oil has invested $6 million in energy exploration and acquired new opportunities for untapped potential.
These topics brush the surface of our work— read on for more of our recent highlights. Thank you for your interest and partnership in these endeavors, your commitment to the community, and your friendship. I appreciate the confidence that has been placed in me. Together, we are “Flying in Formation.” Join us as we fly forward.
CHRISTIAN KEESEE
Groove-Billed Ani
This social bird is known as an entertainer, moving and singing in amusing yet strategic ways. It values community and cooperation.
Christian Keesee Charitable Trust
Focusing on music, dance, opera, and architectural integrity in Oklahoma City, New York, and London, we work to help create moments of artistic beauty.
Collared Forest Falcon
This bird acts with precision and symbolizes vision, focus, and forward thinking.
Christian Keesee Charitable Trust
FROM THE FOUNDER
SUPPORTING WONDERFUL CAUSES brings so much joy. The Christian Keesee Charitable Trust was designed for philanthropy beyond the focus areas of the Kirkpatrick Foundation and Kirkpatrick Family Fund. As time marches on, however, we find the three philanthropies entering into a harmonious conversation, with our grantees working together for even greater artistic and cultural impact.
These past two years, it has been satisfying to see and support the outstanding work of the Tate galleries and Garsington Opera in England, Oklahoma City University’s art gallery, KEIGWIN + COMPANY at Hudson River Park in Manhattan, and the new Arboretum Collaborative across four sites in Oklahoma City.
The charitable trust works to amplify the impact of these organizations for their audiences. Each of them exemplifies values the trust holds dear: artistic excellence and deep community ties. We invest in the cultural lives of communities we know and love, and we approach our philanthropy with purpose, care, and a deep respect for our long-term responsibility.
I hope our work inspires you to stand up for the causes you believe in. It makes a difference.
CHRISTIAN KEESEE
STEWARDING THE ECOSYSTEM
BUR OAKS SOAR MORE THAN SIXTY feet into the air at Red Ridge Nature Preserve in Oklahoma City. Oaks, elms, and Chinese pistaches frame a pastoral setting at Mollie Spencer Farm in Yukon, Oklahoma. Red oaks and pecans line Broadway Avenue in Campbell Art Park in downtown Oklahoma City, adjacent to Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, and an American elm stands sentry to a garden oasis at Park House in Nichols Hills, Oklahoma.
Together, these four interconnected (but not attached) Oklahoma City metropolitan-area properties constitute the Arboretum Collaborative, which achieved Level 1 accreditation from ArbNet in 2025 based on a number of factors. Only four other organizations in Oklahoma held accredited status from ArbNet’s worldwide accreditation program as of March 2026. The prestigious Morton Arboretum—just west of Chicago, Illinois—established the accreditation process.
The designation marks the properties’ commitment to protecting and studying Oklahoma native trees, along with professionally documenting the Kirkpatrick Tree Collection. Accreditation also makes it easier to share knowledge and collaborate with fellow aboreta.
The Arboretum Collaborative boasts seventynine species of trees, far surpassing the minimum of twenty-five required for accreditation. This “living museum” is dedicated to increasing its tree collection and advancing biodiversity. Through common association with the Kirkpatrick family, each property shares the common values of animal well-being and historic preservation. Each is open to the public from time to time during the year.
In 2028, we look forward to the Eleanor Kirkpatrick Garden and Great Lawn at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital in downtown Oklahoma City joining our efforts.
As the properties add to the tree collection, they will make use of native species to provide food and shelter for local wildlife. For example, one native oak tree can host more than 500 species of butterflies and moths, which serve as pollinators—and as critical food for songbirds.
Additional trees will also decrease the surrounding temperature, providing a thermal refuge in Oklahoma City, and generate oxygen. Lance Swearengin, deputy director of Red Ridge Nature Preserve, sees visitors marvel at the old-growth post oaks and blackjack oaks, which have grown undisturbed for decades, right in the middle of the city.
“My hope,” he said, “is that it will inspire people to conserve the trees we have now, plant trees for the next generation, and see trees as living organisms worth protecting. When you look at a tree, you see birds, caterpillars, bugs—the whole habitat is alive and functioning.”
American elm at Park House
Red Ridge bur oak
Mollie Spencer Farm
LET’S MAKE A DANCE
LARRY KEIGWIN IMAGINES A WORLD where everyone dances joyfully and builds community along the way.
In fall 2025, KEIGWIN + COMPANY invited the public to create Sundown Dances together for free at Hudson River Park in Manhattan, continuing the dance company’s ethos of community-based work.
Several dozen community members—anyone who wanted in—embarked on a several-week “playful choreographic process” for Rhapsody The original Rhapsody debuted in 2022 at
Rhapsody in Domino Park
Domino Park in Brooklyn, where K+C Producer Andrea Lodico said the dance “took on a roving quality” because the park was long and narrow.
“Each dance is inspired by the participants and what’s unique about their community,” Lodico said. “Each time we do this, I feel newly affirmed about the impact of this kind of work, where participants step into an experience where they might feel a little bit nervous. They take a risk, and then they go on to have this extraordinary experience where they’re performing alongside professional dancers and doing something creative.”
Keigwin described the 2025 iteration—K+C’s fifth version—of Rhapsody as rhythmic, borrowing beats from Africa, Brazil, and Latin America.
“This Rhapsody is more endurance: sweaty, smiling, and sure,” he said.
On performance days, movement kicked off with an all-ages Let’s Make a Dance class. Then 2nd Best Dance Company and Brooklyn United Marching Band performed, Rhapsody premiered to live music from percussion trio CHAIN, and the community celebrated with a dance party.
“There is something I find completely capti-
vating about seeing other people’s joy,” Keigwin said. “We are rooted in the joy of dance.”
K+C recognizes the mental and physical health benefits of dance and believes anyone can dance, Keigwin and Lodico said. Sundown Dances, in particular, also celebrated parks.
“We bring folks together in a celebration of shared space and shared experience,” Lodico said. “It’s so valuable to have an experience where you get to be creative and get to revel in the joy of dancing. The community remains after the project has wrapped up.”
Rhapsody in Domino Park
Rhapsody in Brooklyn Bridge Park
OPERA IN STYLE
AN HOUR FROM LONDON IN THE rolling Chiltern Hills, a largely transparent opera pavilion of hardwood, steel, and fabric nestles into the grounds at Wormsley, a Getty family private residence. The award-winning, lightweight pavilion was designed to be packed away at the conclusion of each Garsington Opera summer festival, but fans loved it so much that it
has stayed—and the opera’s footprint at Wormsley has expanded.
In 2024, Garsington Studios opened, ushering in on-site community workshops, rehearsal and recording spaces, and new opportunities for community to build around the arts. “We provide a bold and ambitious participatory program” for adults, young people, schools,
and professionals, according to the opera. “We use opera as a medium to improve emotional well-being and to champion the vital benefit of musical engagement.”
In December 2025, the opera debuted its winter concert series, presented at Garsington Studios in partnership with London’s Wigmore Hall. One month prior, the opera welcomed new
Garsington Opera’s pavilion
Eighteenth-century walled garden
L’elisir d’amore
Executive Director Ben Weston, a seasoned arts and classical music television producer.
The United Kingdom’s The i Paper reported in 2024 that “Garsington has established itself as the most stylish and adventurous of Britain’s country-house opera companies.”
Each performance begins with the grounds opening to guests several hours in advance. Dressed in black tie, they can enjoy high tea, take in the cricket field, and walk the gardens, designed to evoke the opera’s original setting in Oxfordshire. Leonard and Rosalind Ingrams founded the opera in 1989 at their home, Garsington Manor. They hosted “popular and experimental opera, accompanied by picnic and tea tents,” according to the
UK’s Architects’ Journal. Following Mr. Ingrams’s death, the opera moved to Wormsley in 2011.
Snell Associates architects elevated the opera pavilion so it appears to float, and the structure features Japanese-inspired external sliding screens. Verandas and a bridge link the pavilion to the landscape, with woodlands and a lake embracing the performance hall.
The opera has partnered with Philharmonia Orchestra and the English Concert, as well as working with high-profile performers and the Garsington Opera Chorus, largely filled with singers just out of music conservatories. The summer lineup often includes a Mozart opera. Each performance includes a dinner interval,
with options including a fine-dining restaurant, catered picnic hampers, private dining locations, and bring-your-own picnic spots.
In 2024, Garsington allocated 11 percent of tickets to young people and those experiencing barriers to attendance, believing that “opera should be accessible to all ages and backgrounds.”
Weston, having experienced Garsington Opera as a guest for more than twenty years, told the UK publication Classical Music he was “delighted … to help shape the future of the company: presenting exceptional opera, increasing opportunities to nurture the UK’s artistic and technical workforce, and inspiring the widest possible audience through this great art form.”
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
THE HALOGENS FLIP ON, SMOKE DRIFTS IN, AND THE artwork emerges: a perfect one-meter cube framed by light. Reflections visually lift the piece in space, while the mechanism—metal light fixtures— complete the artwork with shadows on surrounding walls.
1m3 light by Olafur Eliasson speaks to the artist’s use of light, water, geometry, and science in public and installation art. This piece exhibited at Oklahoma City University’s Nona Jean Hulsey Art Gallery in fall 2025 after having previously shown in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado; the Museum of Modern Art PS1 in Queens, New York; and art centers in Germany.
In 1m3 light, lights delineate the cube, resulting in a minimal and conceptual—yet beautiful—piece. As the haze rolls in and dissipates, the clarity of the cube waxes and wanes.
For the opening reception, musicians Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon, with their ensemble Onyx Lane, performed a truncated version of their album inspired by Eliasson’s artwork. Kirkpatrick Family Fund supported the collaborative music project through the University of Central Oklahoma, where Conlon teaches, and the 2020 pandemic provided the
musicians with a much longer timeline, allowing them to expand their originally planned soundscape for 1m3 light into the full-length album Cube of Light.
Giacona and Conlon were inspired by the early twentieth century avantgarde Italian Futurist cinema manifesto and developed three short films, also shown at the OCU gallery, to accompany Eliasson’s work.
OCU hosted four packed events during the exhibition, Obscured Images. The show also featured the platinum prints of Stillwater, Oklahoma, artist Andy Mattern, whose photography works are held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and others.
“1m3 is, in its own way, a performance piece,” said Heather Lunsford, OCU gallery director. Combined with Mattern’s static images, the Onyx Lane videos, and the live musical performances, the show offered a range of ways to engage with and understand the art.
1m3 light “is a very serious piece and almost stoic in its own way,” Lunsford said. “The music disarms people and makes it so relatable and so human.”
1m3 light by Olafur Eliasson, exhibited at Oklahoma City University’s Nona Jean Hulsey Art Gallery in fall 2025.
Installation photography of Anthony McCall: Solid Light exhibition at Tate Modern, June 27, 2024–June 29, 2025.
© Anthony McCall
ARTISTIC OPPORTUNITIES
OKLAHOMA WELCOMED THE TATE Americas Foundation in February 2025, as its North American Acquisitions Committee conducted site visits and research into art and opportunities in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Tate consists of four major United Kingdom galleries and additional exhibits showcasing British art from the sixteenth century to the present, along with international modern and contemporary art. Tate Americas Foundation supports the work of Tate in the UK, and the committee helps Tate acquire major works of art by American and Canadian artists.
The committee had an in-depth visit to Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, solidifying Tate Modern’s upcoming loan of the Anthony McCall exhibit Solid Light to Oklahoma Contemporary. The Oklahoma show is planned for March 13–July 27, 2026. It recently showed at Tate Modern in 2024 and 2025.
While in Oklahoma, the committee also visited sculptor Raven Halfmoon’s studio in Norman. In Arkansas, the group experienced James Turrell’s SkySpace, The Way of Color and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House, both on the grounds of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.
Capping the visit, the group had a celebratory dinner at Park House in Nichols Hills, Oklahoma.
Tate is committed to art of the past, present, and future—and helping the public enjoy and understand it.
Members of the Tate Americas Foundation enjoy a celebratory dinner at Park House.
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A new acquisition: Audrey Hepburn dancing with Fred Astaire on the set of “Funny Face,” March 28, 1957, detail, by Richard Avedon. Gelatin silver print, 2003.
Our purpose is to improve the lives of the people and animal friends in the communities we serve.
ZOOLOGY PROFESSOR, AVIAN ARTIST, AND author George Miksch Sutton was a dear friend of John and Eleanor Kirkpatrick. Their paths crossed during Sutton’s long tenure at the University of Oklahoma.
In the late 1970s, Sutton donated seventy-five paintings of Mexican birds to the Kirkpatrick Center in Oklahoma City, some of which are represented in these pages, in the company of several pieces from the George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
The Kirkpatrick philanthropies and companies extend a special thank-you to Oklahoma City Community Foundation and President & CEO Trisha Finnegan for helping to bring the Sutton artwork back to life for future generations to enjoy.
THE GEORGE SUTTON ARTWORK ON THE OPENING SPREAD AND OPPOSITE THE TABLE OF CONTENTS WAS PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAN REINKING, SENIOR BIOLOGIST, GEORGE MIKSCH SUTTON AVIAN RESEARCH CENTER. WE EXTEND OUR SINCERE GRATITUDE FOR THE USE OF THIS ARTWORK.
2024 & 2025 Annual Report
1m3 light (Eliasson) exhibition
Avedon, Richard, Audrey Hepburn dancing with Fred Astaire on the set of “Funny Face”
KEIGWIN + COMPANY (K+C)
“Flying in Formation” theme [2], 6 focus of, Christian Keesee Charitable Trust 64, 67 founder’s message, Christian Keesee Charitable Trust 67
Garsington Opera 66, 72–73 Garsington Studios
Keesee, Christian, founding roles
Kirkpatrick, John and Eleanor
Kirkpatrick Family Archive
McCall, Anthony, Solid Light 76, 77
Oklahoma City Community Foundation 6, 108
Oklahoma City University Nona Jean Hulsey Art Gallery
Arts Center
Sutton, George Miksch 6, 108
An Introduction to the Birds of Pennsylvania, 1928 [2] bird illustrations and symbolism [2–3], 4, 7, 65
“Flying in Formation” theme [2], 6
Lance
KIRKPATRICK FAMILY FUND
KIRKPATRICK FOUNDATION
CHRISTIAN KEESEE CHARITABLE TRUST
KIRKPATRICK BANK
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