Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Georgia O’Keeffe has long been one of my favorite artists. I love the luminous colors, sensuous curves, and deceptive simplicity of her paintings. For me, her work is the ideal combination of abstract and representational.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is just a few blocks from the Santa Fe Plaza. The exhibits follow O’Keeffe’s life journey. It was interesting to see examples of her early work, reflecting her formal training as a painter in Chicago and her two years as an art teacher in West Texas. Then came her move to New York City and marriage to art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. And finally, her real love affair: New Mexico, which eventually became her permanent home.

Many people are familiar with O’Keeffe’s paintings of flowers. The museum has surprisingly few of those. Instead, we saw a variety of landscapes; a fascinating collection of paintings of trees; and selected clothing, artists’ tools, books, and other belongings that gave us a sense of her personal style. I loved seeing the pieces inspired by her world travels during her later years.

Museum exterior

One of the galleries, bathed in natural light

Stump in Red Hills, 1940

Oil on canvas. She liked this stump so much that she brought it home to the Ghost Ranch.

Cottonwoods, ca. 1952

Oil on canvas. There are cottonwoods everywhere here, and this time of year (spring) their foliage is this bright shade of green. I love the swirls in this painting.

On the River I Canyon Country III, ca. 1965

Oil on canvas. Inspired by her view of Glen Canyon while rafting the Colorado River at age 73!

Misti - A Memory, 1957

Oil on canvas. El Misti is a dormant volcano in the Andes in southern Peru. She spent three months traveling Peru at age 68.

Gallery wall

The photo shows O'Keefe wearing her Stetson hat and the "OK" brooch made by her friend Alexander Calder. In the background is one of her rare sculptures, inspired by a ram's horn (small scale models are in the glass case in the foreground).

We didn’t have time to visit O’Keeffe’s house in Abiqui, which is 52 miles from Santa Fe. It was a hacienda dating back to 1744; she purchased it (in ruins) from the Catholic Church in 1945 and renovated it with a friend before moving in permanently in 1949. She was particularly enamored of a patio wall with a door in the center, and featured it repeatedly in her paintings and photographs. The furniture and decor are quintessentially Midcentury Modern - LOVELOVELOVE!

Admission to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is free to members of NARM institutions.