O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection

September 14, 2001 - January 13, 2002

The art of Georgia O’Keeffe has been well known for eight decades in this country and for many years has been attaining similar prominence abroad. More than 500 examples of her works are in more than 100 public collections in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. In addition, since her work was first exhibited in New York in 1916, it has been included in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions organized around the world. Thus, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that, at the time of her death in 1986, when she was 98, O’Keeffe owned more than half of the 2029 known works of her total output.

The exhibition, O’Keeffe’s O’Keeffes: The Artist’s Collection, included 73 works from this collection. It addressed for the first time the range and significance of O’Keeffe’s collection to reveal previously unknown aspects of the artist’s ideas about her achievement.

Organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the exhibition was on view in Milwaukee from May 4, 2001 through August 19, 2001, and in Santa Fe from September 14, 2001 through January 13, 2002. The Milwaukee tenure of the exhibition coincided with the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s new wing, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes travels to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, February 8 through May 20, 2002. Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Emily Fisher Landau director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, curated O’Keeffe’s O’Keeffes. The exhibition catalogue includes an introduction by Russell Bowman, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, and an essay by Lynes that explores the various strategies that O’Keeffe pursued during the four decades (1946–1986) that she managed her collection and career.

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection was made possible, in part, through a generous grant from The Burnett Foundation. Additional support was received from the National Advisory Council of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum; The Ameritech Foundation; New Mexico Arts, a division of the Office of Cultural Affairs; and by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers' Tax.