Entry No. 29 — the Oklahoma City file — filed under: haunted

Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art

Founded in 1919 by a well-traveled Benedictine monk, this small but legitimately strange museum holds the only ancient Egyptian mummies on public display in Oklahoma — human and animal — alongside genuine shrunken heads and a surprisingly deep collection of Renaissance through 20th-century art. It's a cabinet-of-curiosities meets serious art museum, tucked quietly onto a Shawnee campus most people drive past without knowing.

The move: Spend a couple of hours working through the Egyptian collection together — linger over the CT-scanned mummies and let the weirdness of the shrunken heads do the talking — then grab lunch at one of Shawnee's spots on Main Street and compare notes on which exhibit unsettled you most. Admission is modest (under $10), and Tuesday through Saturday hours give plenty of flexibility for a half-day trip from OKC.

📍 Before you go It sits on the leafy former St. Gregory's University campus in Shawnee, roughly 40 minutes east of OKC off I-40 — easy to blow past, so follow the campus signs to the museum building rather than hunting for a street entrance. On-site parking is free and well marked. It is closed Mondays, so build a Tuesday-through-weekend trip; the Egyptian collection that draws people gets extra programming around Halloween, when the mummies become the main event. Shawnee's historic Main Street, a few minutes south, is your built-in lunch stop, so treat the museum as the first half of a half-day rather than the whole outing.

• 📍 Shawnee
• 💸 $
• ⚡ Up for anything
• 🌗 Indoors

Where: 1900 W. MacArthur St., Shawnee, OK 74804

Hours: Mined 2026-06-07 — confirm current hours before you go.

Plan a visit & invite your people →

Further reading: mgmoa.org · Yelp · news-star.com

last checked: 2026-06-07