Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

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The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was opened in July 1997, eleven years after the death of the American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. It 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 and John Marion, part-time residents of Santa Fe. The Museum building was designed by architect Richard Gluckman, whose 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.

The Museum is dedicated to perpetuating the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe and to the study and interpretation of American Modernism. It is the first art museum dedicated to the work of a woman artist of international stature. The Museum's permanent collection of O'Keeffe's work is the largest of any museum in the world.

Initially, with more than 140 paintings, watercolors, pastels and sculpture, the Museum's holdings represented the largest repository of work by O'Keeffe available to the public in a single institution. Subjects range from the artist's iconic flowers and bleached desert skulls to nudes, landscapes, cityscapes, still-lifes and abstracts, dating between 1916 and 1980.

The collection now includes major gifts contributed by 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.

In early-2005, the President of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and the Chairman of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation announced today that their boards had signed a letter of intent that established the principles under which the Foundation would transfer all of its assets to the Museum. The Foundation's collection of more than 1,000 O'Keeffe artworks and extensive archival materials would be conveyed to the Museum, as would O'Keeffe's house and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Upon completion of the transaction, the Museum's art and archival collections will increase dramatically, and the Museum will become the steward of O'Keeffe's historic house in Abiquiu. The Museum already owns and maintains the artist's Ghost Ranch property, 20 minutes north of Abiquiu.

The Foundation and the Museum expect to complete the transfer of the Foundation's assets by mid-2006.

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center opened in July 2001. It provides stipends to scholars to pursue projects relevant to the study of American Modernism and to the art and life of Georgia O'Keeffe. Areas of study include art and architectural history, literature, music and photography.

[edit] Further reading

Eldredge, Charles C., Georgia O'Keeffe, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991 ISBN 0-8109-3657-7
Hassrick, Peter H. (ed.), The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997 ISBN 0-8109-2794-2
Hogrefe, Jeffrey, O'Keeffe, The Life of an American Legend, New York:Bantam; 1994; ISBN 0-553-56545-1
Lisle, Laurie, Portrait of an Artist, New York: Washington Square Press; 1986 ISBN 0-671-60040-0
Lynes, Barbara Buhler, (et. al.), Georgia O’Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-691-11659-8
Lynes, Barbara Buhler, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonne, Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1999. ISBN 0-300-08176-6
Lynes, Barbara Buhler and King, George G., Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Highlights of the Collection, Santa Fe, NM: O’Keeffe Museum, date unk. ISBN 0-8109-9153-5
O’Keeffe, Georgia, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: Viking Press, 1976 ISBN 0-670-33710-2
Montgomery, Elizabeth, Georgia O'Keeffe, New York:Barnes & Noble, 1993 ISBN 0-88029-951-7
Peters, Sarah W., Becoming O'Keeffe, New York:Abbeville Press, 1991 ISBN 1558593624