Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

 

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

 

 

 

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe, her life, American modernism, and public engagement. It opened on July 17, 1997, eleven years after the artist's death, and is located at 217 Johnson Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.

 

 

The private, non-profit museum was founded in November 1995 by philanthropists Anne Windfohr Marion and John L. Marion, part-time residents of Santa Fe.[2] The museum building was designed by architect Richard Gluckman in association with Santa Fe firm Allegretti Architects. Gluckman's projects have included the gallery addition at the Whitney Museum of American Art's permanent collection in New York City and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[1]

The first director, Peter H. Hassrick, resigned eleven days after the museum opened in 1997, leaving museum president Jay Cantor temporarily in charge.[3] George King was director from 1998 to 2009.[4] Robert Kret, formerly director of the Hunter Museum of American Art, is the current director.[4]

The collection is the largest permanent collection of O'Keeffe's work in the world. Subjects range from the artist's innovative abstractions to her iconic large-format flower, skull, and landscape paintings to paintings of architectural forms and rocks, shells, and trees.[1] It includes gifts from the Burnett Foundation, the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Anna Marie and Juan Hamilton, Gerald and Kathleen Peters, Anne W. Marion, The Stephane Janssen Trust, Anne W. Phillips, Clare and Eugene Thaw, and Emily Fisher Landau.[1] Initially, the collection was made of 140 O'Keeffe paintings, watercolors, pastels, and sculptures, but now includes nearly 1,200 objects.[4]

In May 2014, the museum opened a regional office in Dallas, Texas, led by Betty Brownlee.[5]

 

 

 

Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation

The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation was established in 1989 to help resolve a legal dispute between Juan Hamilton, O'Keeffe's assistant late in her life, and two of O'Keeffe's relatives over O'Keeffe's will. Based in Abiquiú, the Foundation renovated and maintained O'Keeffe's Abiquiú home and studio and worked with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to produce the 1999 catalogue raisonné of O'Keeffe's work.[11]

In early 2006, the Foundation announced that it would transfer all of its assets to the museum. The museum acquired 981 works by O’Keeffe, including 163 finished paintings, drawings, and sculptures; 669 sketches; and 149 photographs by O’Keeffe; as well as 1,770 photographs by other photographers documenting O’Keeffe, her houses, the subjects of her work, important events in her life, and her animals and friends.[12]