The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum holds the largest collection of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work anywhere: more than three thousand objects, among them 140 oil paintings and close to seven hundred drawings, dating from 1901 to 1984. It sits at 217 Johnson Street, two blocks northwest of the Plaza, inside a former Baptist church.

What Is Actually on the Walls

The collection is far larger than the building, so what hangs at any moment is a changing selection rather than a fixed display, usually built around a period or an idea. Expect to find a handful of the paintings everybody knows, and a good deal besides: the early charcoal abstractions of 1915 and 1916, the New York work of the twenties, watercolors, sculpture, and the New Mexico landscapes. The museum also holds photographs, letters, and her working materials, and those are often where a visitor learns the most. The galleries are small and deliberately plain, closer to domestic scale than to the scale of a modern museum, which suits the work.

The New Mexico Museum of Art, on the Plaza, also holds her work, and the galleries of Canyon Road are ten minutes east.

The Building, and the One Being Built

The museum was founded in November 1995 by Anne Windfohr Marion and John L. Marion, and opened to the public on 17 July 1997, eleven years after O’Keeffe’s death. The conversion of the church was carried out by Richard Gluckman with the Santa Fe firm Allegretti Architects. Gluckman had done the Andy Warhol Museum and gallery work at the Whitney, and his instinct for restraint is the reason the place reads as a house for paintings rather than a monument to a name. He was converting the rail-side warehouse that became SITE SANTA FE in the same years.

A new museum is now under construction on the 100 block of Grant Avenue, a few minutes’ walk away. It was designed by DNCA Architects, a Santa Fe firm, with landscape by Reed Hilderbrand, and runs to 54,000 square feet, roughly 22,000 of that below ground for collections care, alongside close to an acre of public green space. It is scheduled to open in 2028. The Johnson Street museum stays open throughout, and the institution has said it does not intend to sell it.

Abiquiú

The museum has been steward of O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home and studio since 2006. It is a National Historic Landmark about fifty miles northwest of Santa Fe, the house she found as a ruin, rebuilt over years, and lived in for the second half of her life. Tours are seasonal and by appointment, and they are the single best thing the institution does, because the house explains the paintings in a way the paintings cannot explain themselves. Her second New Mexico house, at Ghost Ranch, is not open to the public. The research center and archive occupy the A. M. Bergere house downtown.

Seeing the museum and the house in one trip takes two days and is worth arranging that way.

Common Questions

What is on show at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum?

A changing selection from a collection of more than three thousand works, built around a period or an idea rather than a fixed permanent display. Expect early abstractions, New York work, New Mexico landscapes, and her working materials.

Can you visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s house?

Yes. The museum has been steward of her Abiquiú home and studio, a National Historic Landmark about fifty miles northwest of Santa Fe, since 2006. Tours are seasonal and by appointment. Ghost Ranch is not open.