Access O’Keeffe

All Georgia O’Keeffe Artworks, Right at Your Fingertips!

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum embarks on an innovative digital catalogue raisonné project providing free access to explore the artist's full body of work.

Project Documentation

Balthazar Korab. Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu studio, 1965. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation Photographs, MS.57

Overview

A catalogue raisonné lists all the known works of an artist and is a critical tool for researching and understanding the full body of work of an artist. However, because information surrounding an artist and their work evolves over time, printed catalogues raisonné inevitably become outdated. The 1999 Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné is a tremendous source of information, but as with any catalogue in print, the text does not reflect the past twenty years of active research, exhibitions, and changes in artwork ownership.

Substantially funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Access O’Keeffe addresses the shortcomings of a printed catalogue raisonné, and aims to create a new model for what is possible through a digital platform. This project will directly impact the target audiences of researchers and educators. Those in these audiences are generally creating content for the general public, and therefore we believe the impacts will be far-reaching.

Access O’Keeffe explores new ways to engage the public in learning about the art and life of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Working with contributors around the world, the O’Keeffe Museum will provide free access to all known artworks by Georgia O’Keeffe as a user-friendly searchable browser with related images, exhibition histories, archival materials, and other data associated with the artist’s catalogue raisonné. Visual descriptions will be written for all artworks to increase accessibility. The resulting product based on a Linked Art linked open data platform will offer new ways to explore an artist’s full body of work through data visualization and other research tools.

In addition to the Museum’s own collection the O’Keeffe Museum seeks contributions from approximately 145 contributing organizations to share up-to-date information for O’Keeffe artworks in public collections. Access O’Keeffe will drive traffic to these institutions by linking to records in contributor’s online collections, creating a rich online learning and exploration process. Information regarding O’Keeffe artworks in private collections will be sourced from the 1999 print edition of the Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné as well as through existing relationships with private collectors.

Key Features

Designs and scope of the project are still in process – including how it will be named. The following illustrations give an idea of how this project will manifest, but changes could still occur in the development stage and these should be considered draft illustrations.

Georgia O’Keeffe Artwork Detail Page

The artwork detail page aims to first showcase an at-a-glance summary of information that clearly states its current collection with links to more information about that organization. To protect the privacy of independent collectors, works in private collections are marked as such without providing additional personal information.

Following the summary information is a Catalogue Raisonné area providing more detailed artwork information. This area provides a carousel of images to allow an individual to explore works surrounding the artwork in the Catalogue Raisonné, allowing one to ‘page through’ in the digital format.

Draft of an object detail page with the following notes: -At-a-glance summary artwork information; -Link to page with all O’Keeffe artworks and references to this collection; -Link to purchase custom print, when available; -Link to collection record at home institution, when available (In this example, to the Reynolda House’s collection record); -Browse artworks in the context of the 1999 Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné with filter options; -Detailed artwork information as found in a catalogue raisonné.
Draft example of artwork detail page with summary and catalogue raisonné information.
Example of detailed artwork information showing the title details for a specific work from the catalogue raisonné.
Draft example of detailed artwork information in the catalogue raisonné section showing title details.

Supporting User Workflows

Access O’Keeffe focuses on supporting user workflows such as providing templates for various types of output: pdf (print), excel, or comma separated data; and offering tools to make personalized lists.

Export Tools

A draft of a page showing how lists of objects may work in Access O'Keeffe.
Draft of how individuals will be able to make their own lists of items to print, export, or share to create exhibition checklists, create lesson plans, or simply to perform general research.

Information Updates

Each artwork page will indicate the last date updated and provide access to previous versions to verify citations. The O’Keeffe Museum plans to check in with contributing collection annually for updates, or contributors can alert the team at any time to make updates.

And More…

Stay tuned for additional features!

Project Timeline

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum team are reaching out to current collections to verify and update information about artworks in their collections. Meanwhile, the team progresses on developing the designs, data pipelines, features and platform, expected to go live in the fall of 2025.