To celebrate American Archives Month 2023, which happens every October, we are featuring content from newly processed collections from our archive each week. This year, we are spotlighting the Georgia O’Keeffe Papers (MS33), to celebrate the completion of processing and the publication of the finding aid after many years and several archivists.
A fascinating element of the Georgia O’Keeffe Papers documents her subterranean fallout shelter located at her Abiquiu home and studio. For some historical context, O’Keeffe was born in 1887 into a post-Civil War America. She lived through the Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, and much of the Cold War. She began spending her summers at the Ghost Ranch cottage in 1935, and 10 years later, she bought a house down the road in Abiquiu. O’Keeffe moved in for good in 1949 – the year that the Soviet Union detonated their first nuclear test in Kazakhstan. Throughout the 1950s, nuclear tests took place all over the New Mexican desert, and O’Keeffe may have felt and seen the infamous “Trinity” test from Ghost Ranch.
By 1965, an estimated 200,000 shelters had been built across the country. According to Pita Lopez, the Museum's Director of Historic Properties, O’Keeffe built hers because she “wanted to be around to see what the landscape would look like if there was ever a catastrophe.”
The archival materials include handwritten instructions for reading the Victoreen Fallout Detection Meter, which was a device that will “tell you at a glance the rate of exposure at moment of exposure and helps you seek a safe refuge immediately. A precision instrument for protecting against lethal gamma rays from atomic fallout, it is the civilian version of the official model sold to the government by Victoreen.”
House and Property Files, Georgia O’Keeffe Papers, 1914-1991. MS-33. Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
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