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For this year's American Archives Month, we have been 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. 

To wrap this year's American Archives Month up, we will turn our focus to one of the more popular series of the collection: the House and Property files. O’Keeffe maintained two homes in Northern New Mexico; her summer home at the Ghost Ranch, and her home and studio in Abiquiu. While both homes are owned by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, only the Abiquiu Home and Studio is open for public tours. O’Keeffe’s homes reveal her commitment to design and the aesthetics of her surroundings. She made her home distinctly modern, with abundant natural light, updated amenities and midcentury furniture. She kept manuals and brochures from appliances and tools that she used, including her Chemex carafes, Macintosh radio, and Barwa chairs.

O’Keeffe was also an avid gardener; when she purchased her Abiquiu home in 1945, she hired Maria Chabot to manage the restoration and rebuilding of the property to take place between 1946 and 1949, while O’Keeffe was in New York settling Alfred Stieglitz’s estate. Chabot planned to line the perimeter of the garden with tamarisks, willows and various fruit trees. The center of the garden would be leveled for planting vegetables and flowers (corn, radishes, roses, irises, poppies and hollyhocks). By the time O’Keeffe made Abiquiu her permanent home in 1949, the garden was able to supply almost all of the fruits and vegetables for her homes. She harvested the plants during the summer, enjoying the fresh produce at her Ghost Ranch home and preserving other herbs, fruits and vegetables for winter use at the Abiquiu house by drying, canning and freezing them. The garden at her Abiquiu home remains much as it was during her lifetime. Staff and interns, who live in Abiquiu and surrounding communities, work the land every summer and distribute the fruits and vegetables locally and to nearby food banks. 

The materials related to the garden in the Georgia O’Keeffe Papers include these seed catalogs, instructional manuals, irrigation techniques, and a “Victory Garden Handbook”.

 House and property files, 1943-1983, undated, Georgia O’Keeffe Papers, 1914-1991. MS-33. Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

To continue our celebration of American Archives Month 2023, 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. 

Another series in this collection includes Georgia O’Keeffe's travel ephemera. She famously loved to travel and equally loved to document these travels, creating boxes of ephemera for each location she visited. She took her first international trip in the 1930s and traveled continuously until 1983, when she went on her last international trip to Costa Rica at the age of 96. From informational pamphlets to design ideas for her home and garden, these materials reflect what she chose to keep as mementos of her travels. For more information about her travels, see the August “Mornings with O’Keeffe” talk given by Giustina Renzoni, Curator of Historic Properties, here.

These photos include pamphlets from O'Keeffe's trips to the Glen Canyon and Lake Powell area, New Mexico, Mexico, and Tahiti.

Travel Files 1946-circa 1980, Georgia O’Keeffe Papers, 1914-1991. MS-33. Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

To continue our celebration of 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. 

Another subseries in this collection is the Abiquiu Notebooks, which are essentially documentation of O’Keeffe herself as an archivist. These notebooks are a comprehensive index of her works dating from 1914 through the 1970s, sorted by date, location, and subject, and include reference photographs. The notebooks also include the Alfred Stieglitz estate distribution, which took O’Keeffe 3 years to settle.

The Abiquiu Notebooks are O'Keeffe's own records of her artwork, originally compiled by Doris Bry, chief assistant, curator, exclusive dealer and, finally, executor of O'Keeffe's estate, in the 1950s. The Notebooks document titles, dimensions, owners, exhibition history, and more in the form of an individual factsheet for each work, and often include reference photographs to remove the ambiguity around paintings' identities. Additional business papers include exhibition records, especially ephemera and checklists, as well as papers from O'Keeffe's time working with Edith Halpert and the Downtown Gallery, such as receipts, correspondence, and lists.

These photos are examples of O’Keeffe works by creation date and the accompanying exhibition history. Paintings shown in order: Maple and Cedar, Lake George 1923; Pattern of Leaves, 1923; and Pink Moon and Blue Lines, 1923.

Abiquiu Notebooks, 1914-1980, Georgia O’Keeffe Papers, 1914-1991. MS-33. Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

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.

To celebrate American Archives Month 2023, which happens every October, we are featuring content from newly processed collections from our archive. 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!

After Georgia O'Keeffe's death, The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation (GOKF) was established in 1989 to protect and preserve the legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe. One of its core functions was to distribute O'Keeffe's assets, including her Abiquiu home and studio, and the contents therein. Upon the dissolution of GOKF in 2006, GOKF donated remaining assets to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Among those assets were materials of an archival nature still contained in the Abiquiú home and studio. Those materials now constitute the Georgia O'Keeffe Papers, with the exception of archival materials from the Abiquiú home's Bookroom, which will be processed as a separate collection. Some archival materials remain in the Abiquiú home and studio, and will be transferred to the archive as accruals into the Georgia O'Keeffe Papers. As a whole, the Georgia O'Keeffe Papers provides a unique snapshot into O'Keeffe's day-to-day affairs by representing both the extraordinary aspects of her life as well as the decidedly mundane.

Over the next month, we will be highlighting a handful of prominent themes found throughout this particular collection. Included in these highlights are O’Keeffe’s fallout shelter at her Abiquiú home and studio, materials related to her garden, and other household ephemera. We will also be taking a look at the Abiquiú Notebooks series, which are O’Keeffe’s own record of her artwork, originally compiled by Doris Bry in the 1950’s. These notebooks document titles, dimensions, owners, exhibition history and more, and they often include reference photographs to remove the ambiguity around paintings’ identities. The collection also includes ephemeral materials from O’Keeffe’s world travel, correspondence, writings, and publications.

Please join us on social media, as well as the Museum's blog this month as we explore these facets of the archive this month. As a reminder, the Library & Archive serves the public by collecting, providing access to, and preserving information about Georgia O’Keeffe and her contemporaries, related regional histories, and Modernism. The Research Collections and Services team is available to answer questions, share resources, and help with your research projects; you can contact us here.

In 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe joined the staff at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, TX as the head of the Art Department. She continued to teach there until 1918.

Through a new donation, Le Mirage, West Texas State Normal College Yearbook, 1917, we can learn more about the school during the period in which O'Keeffe taught: her fellow educators, the students she taught, and the extracurricular activities available to students and staff. To read more about the yearbook, view the finding aid.

Learn More:

Learn more about O'Keeffe's time in Texas through the below resources:

Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters by Amy Von Lintel; Bonney MacDonald

ISBN: 9781623498498

Publication Date: 2020-03-31

In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O'Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for the newly organized Amarillo Public Schools. Subsequently she would join the faculty at what was then West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University). Already a thoroughly independent-minded woman, she maintained an active correspondence with her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and other friends back east during the years she lived in Texas. Amy Von Lintel brings to readers the collected O'Keeffe correspondence and added commentary and analysis, shining fresh light on a period of the artist's life she characterizes as "some of the least appreciated in the vast O'Keeffe scholarship," but also as "a time when she discovered her own voice as a young, successful, and independent woman . . . a dedicated faculty member at a brand-new college . . . a vibrant social butterfly . . . a progressive woman who spoke her mind and fought for her beliefs to be heard." Although selected paintings by O'Keeffe that support the narrative are featured, this work focuses on O'Keeffe's words. By doing so, Von Lintel aims to allow the artist's voice to "emerge as a powerful witness of her own life, but also of western America in a pivotal moment of its development." The result is an important new examination of one of our most beloved artists during a time when she was in the process of discovering her future identity.

Georgia O'Keeffe: Watercolors by Georgia O'Keeffe (Artist); Amy Von Lintel (Text by)

ISBN: 1942185049

Publication Date: 2016-06-28

Georgia O'Keeffe's turn toward abstraction: luscious watercolors of the Texan landscape and her own body Georgia O'Keeffe: Watercolors catalogues the first major exhibition of the nearly 50 watercolors created by O'Keeffe between 1916 and 1918, while she lived in Canyon, Texas. These years mark a period of radical innovation for the artist, during which she firmly established her commitment to abstraction. While her work in Texas is often understood as merely a prelude to her career in New York City, these watercolors and drawings mark a seminal stage in O'Keeffe's artistic formation, representing the pivotal intersection of her disciplined art practice and her allegiance to the revolutionary techniques of her mentor, Arthur Wesley Dow. O'Keeffe's watercolors explore the texture and landscape of the Texas desert and the artist's own body in an exceptionally fragile and sensitive medium, representing a substantial achievement in their own right. These early works also relate to O'Keeffe's large-scale oil paintings, which in their handling of color and texture in some ways seem to aspire to the condition of watercolor. Designed to emphasize direct contact with these beautiful works, Watercolors features full-scale color reproductions of the paintings, most of which are approximately 8x12 inches in scale, offering a powerful testament to the significance of the watercolors in O'Keeffe's creative evolution. Also included (in a wallet at the rear of the book) is a lengthy essay by Amy Von Lintel featuring archival photographs of O'Keeffe from these years. Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is best known for her distinctive paintings of flowers and landscapes which applied a precise, often hard-edged abstract language to evocative natural forms. Dubbed the "mother of American modernism," O'Keeffe produced more than 1,000 artworks in a career of more than 60 years.

 

Timeline by Dr. Amy M. Von Lintel : Timeline focused on O'Keeffe's years spent in West Texas

Georgia O’Keeffe is well known for her paintings, but did you also know she created sculptures? O’Keeffe worked with Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture to cast her swirling sculpture, Abstraction, in 1979-1980 as both 3-foot tall sculptures and 10-foot tall sculptures.

J. Seward Johnson Jr. founded the Johnson Atelier in 1974 as a casting and fabrication facility with an emphasis on education. As such, the institute had a robust apprenticeship program for hands-on learning as well as strong inclinations to experiment with new methods and techniques, working directly with sculptors to achieve their desired artistic outcome.

Two new donations to the archive, MS.65: Abstraction at Johnson Atelier and MS.67: Abstraction on Johnson Atelier Truck, include photographs of the unfinished sculptures at Johnson Atelier with the apprentices who worked on the sculptures as well as a photograph of O’Keeffe visiting the facility and a finished sculpture strapped in a truck bed for transportation. To learn more about these collections, view the finding aids for MS.65 and MS.67.

To explore O’Keeffe’s sculptures in the Museum’s art collection, see our Collections Online.

For additional information about O’Keeffe’s visit to Johnson Atelier, view the finding aid for a related collection, MS.15: Georgia O’Keeffe Abstraction Photographs, or see the images on our Collections Online.

Join the Engl Library and Archive throughout October as we celebrate American Archives Month, a time to raise awareness about the importance of historic documents and records, as well as the archivists who preserve and provide access to archival materials.

What are archives? An archive is a collection of historical records, in any format or media, preserved because of their continuing value. Learn more.

What are finding aids? A finding aid is a descriptive tool for discovering materials in and information about an archival collection. To view the finding aids for our archival collections, see the Archive Finding Aids Database.

All month long we'll be sharing archives news and featuring collections through the Engl Library and Archive news feed.

Have questions for the archivist or about archives or our collections? Please contact us by sending questions to library@okeeffemuseum.org.

Thank you for following along for American Archives Month! Even though the month is almost over, we are here year round. If you are interested in conducting research in the archive at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum but do not know where to start, browsing and searching the Archive Finding Aids Database is the best place to learn about our archival holdings.

See the How-To videos below to learn more about finding aids and using the Archive Finding Aids Database to advance your interests and research.

Part I: Learn what a finding aid is, how to read one, and how to browse finding aids for our processed collections.

Part II: Learn how to search our existing finding aids, and how to browse by subjects and names.

Have questions about archives or our collections? Please contact us by sending questions to library@okeeffemuseum.org.

To celebrate American Archives Month, we are featuring content from newly processed collections from our archive. This week, we are spotlighting Georgia O’Keeffe’s manuscript, My First Trip to New York.

In this ten-page, handwritten manuscript and corresponding typed transcripts, O’Keeffe recounts her first trip to New York to study at the Art Students’ League, as well as meeting Alfred Stieglitz for the first time. Written decades after the events described, O’Keeffe recalls on first entering 291 Gallery:

When Stieglitz heard us he came out and met us with glaring eyes, his dark hair standing up on the top of his head and some piece of photo equipment in his hand. He snapped at us and asked ‘What do you want?’ We wanted to see the Rodin drawings… I looked at the drawings and thought I had never been taught to do anything like that. It seemed to be scribbles. The men began to talk to Stieglitz – He talked back so voices became louder and louder. I wasn’t impressed so I went in the smallest room and stood waiting. There was nothing to sit on so I stood very tired of scribbly drawings and loud arguments.

To learn more about this collection and its contents, view the finding aid!

Electronic Records Day is celebrated annually at the beginning of October and this year it falls on Friday, October 8, 2021. The day is designed to raise awareness among state government agencies, the general public, related professional organizations, and other stakeholders about the crucial role electronic records play in their world. It is sponsored by the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), a national nonprofit association that serves the state and territorial archives in the United States.

What are Electronic Records?

Electronic records are records commonly created (or born) in a digital format but can also be digitized physical materials. We often take electronic records for granted but most of us create them and use them daily. Think about images taken with a smart phone, spreadsheets and documents on a work or home computer, emails, or files at healthcare provider offices.

Maybe today is the day to review your digital files and think about the long-term plan for them? The Library of Congress has some tips.

In celebration of Electronic Records Day this year, CoSA developed a useful poster with information about various emerging electronic records formats. Please take a closer look at the poster on CoSA's website.

Electronic Records Day occurs during American Archives Month and National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

To celebrate American Archives Month, we are featuring content from newly processed collections from our archive. This week, it is time to talk travel!

Georgia O’Keeffe enjoyed traveling not only within the United States, but also around the world. In a newly processed collection, the Georgia O’Keeffe / Alfred Stieglitz Papers, we get a special snapshot of one trip in particular: her 1960 tour of Asia with the Donald L. Ferguson travel company. A thorough itinerary shows not only the cities visited on the tour but also planned stops within each city, while the guest list tells us something of O’Keeffe’s fellow travelers. Receipts, maps, and other ephemera flesh out a rich story of sightseeing, souvenirs, and even boxing matches.

To learn more about this collection and its contents, view the finding aid!

Join the Engl Library and Archive throughout October as we celebrate American Archives Month, a time to raise awareness about the importance of historic documents and records, as well as the archivists who preserve and provide access to archival materials.

What are archives? An archive is a collection of historical records, in any format or media, preserved because of their continuing value. Learn more.

All month long we'll be sharing archives news and featuring collections on Social Media @okeeffemuseum and through the Engl Library and Archive news feed. Join in with you own stories using the hashtag #ArchivesMonth.

Have questions for the archivist or about archives or our collections? Please contact us by sending questions to library@okeeffemuseum.org.