Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’

The place most commonly associated with Georgia O’Keeffe is New Mexico, her home for the last four decades of her life and the state where the museum bearing her name was set up after her death in 1986. In 1924, however, O’Keeffe moved to the newly built Shelton Hotel in Manhattan, which would become her home for the next 12 years. While living there she produced atmospheric paintings, drawings and pastels – which she called ‘my New Yorks’ – inspired by her surroundings. The Art Institute of Chicago is displaying these city works alongside a selection of her nature-focused canvases of the same period, exploring how both threads informed one another and arguing that her urban works are not aberrations in O’Keeffe’s oeuvre but were in fact essential to her development as a pioneer of American modernism (2 June–22 September).

Find out more from the Art Institute of Chicago’s website.

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The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926), Georgia O’Keeffe. The Art Institute of Chicago. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

East River from the Shelton (East River No. 1) (1927–28), Georgia O’Keeffe. New Jersey State Museum Collection. Photo: Peter S. Jacobs; © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses (1931), Georgia O’Keeffe. © The Art Institute of Chicago