Let’s add one more fun thing to do while visiting Santa Fe, NM. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum located at 217 Johnson Street in Santa Fe, NM currently has an exhibition titled Georgia O’Keeffe’s Far Wide Texas on view until October 30, 2016.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum brings together the watercolors created by the artist during the years she lived in Canyon, Texas (1916-1918). This is a period of radical art innovation and when O’Keeffe’s commitment to abstraction is firmly established. She was at West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) when she taught this curriculum, later becoming her life-long practice.
Twenty-eight of the fifty-one watercolors O’Keeffe created while living in Canyon, Texas are on view. It is a gorgeous catalogue accompanying the exhibition of O’Keeffe’s Texas paintings. It would make a good holiday gift for art friends. An essay by Amy Von Lintel, professor of art history at West Texas A&M University, resides with the images. Ms. Lintel has studied the original documents from O’Keeffe’s Texas years, including her letters to Alfred Stieglitz as well as local University documents to shed new critical light on this productive period of O’Keeffe’s life.
And while you are visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, you can also request a tour of the Research Center that is open to visitors. It is an extraordinary opportunity to explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and role in American Modernism and related regional histories to place and view the entire context of O’Keeffe’s life and work through a variety of methods, including:
- the libraries, archives, letters and photographs that belonged to O’Keeffe
- interviews with people who personally knew Georgia O’Keeffe to capture stories and reminiscences
- the painting tools and found objects depicted in her paintings.
The resources and collections housed in the Research Center are open and accessible for visitors to utilize online or in person.
Cody Hartley, Director of Curatorial Affairs, sums up the Georgia O’Keeffe watercolor exhibition:
“They are so powerful and confirm that O’Keeffe’s artistic language and sense of self were fully formed before she left Texas, and they are so rarely seen, that this is a special opportunity to enjoy them in person. It is the one key group of works that won’t be found in London at her retrospective exhibition in the Tate Modern!”
Get your visual arts highlight of the month before Oct. 30, 2016!
