At Home in Texas

The Amon Carter Museum celebrates its storied relationship with Georgia O’Keeffe in an ongoing exhibition of her work

By Michael Clawson

Through September 2027

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In 1966, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art presented a retrospective of the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. The famous painter and modernist icon, who was then 79 years old, attended the show. The exhibition was a watershed moment for the 5-year-old museum, which had a stunning collection of Western images, Hudson River School paintings and even Thomas Cole’s renowned The Garden of Eden, but very little modernism. That was all about to change.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Dark Mesa with Pink Sky, 1930, oil on canvas. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1965.80, © Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Although O’Keeffe was most known for her work in New Mexico and New York, she knew Texas well, especially West Texas, where she taught at public schools in Amarillo starting in 1912 and then later at West Texas State Normal College starting in 1916. Prior to the 1962 retrospective, she developed a friendship with Ruth Carter Stevenson, the Carter’s founder, and Mitchell A. Wilder, the museum’s first director.

“The Carter had only opened in 1961. It started with Western art. It was Mitchell Wilder who really expanded the idea of the Carter and began acquiring artwork and expanding the collection in deep ways,” says museum curator Shirley Reece-Hughes. “We’re not sure how Wilder met O’Keeffe, but it could have been through her husband Alfred Stieglitz. He was featuring artists like Eliot Porter and Wilder was friends with Porter, so it’s likely he knew Stieglitz before his passing [in 1946]. It was that introduction that led Ruth to O’Keeffe, who was very careful about where her work was displayed. Through archival interviews, we know Ruth stayed with O’Keeffe for three days and bonded and developed a friendship, and that’s how she got the exhibition at the Carter.”

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Ranchos Church, New Mexico, 1930-31, oil on canvas. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1971.16.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Red Cannas, 1927, oil on canvas. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1986.11.

Reece-Hughes points to correspondence the artist sent to the museum founder, with O’Keeffe’s “beautiful, looping style” that was so ornate it was difficult to read. In one informal letter, O’Keeffe wrote to her new friends, “I enjoyed drinking beer with you,” and urged them to come back. When the retrospective opened in 1966, O’Keeffe was on hand. “The exhibition buoyed her career,” Reece-Hughes notes. “She came to the opening, she helped install the show and was involved in every aspect.”

O’Keeffe’s meaningful friendship with the Amon Carter Museum is at the heart of a new exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe and the Carter, now open through September 2027 in Fort Worth, Texas. The exhibition will feature eight important O’Keeffe paintings, an assemblage by Arthur Dove that was gifted to the museum by O’Keeffe, and a rotation of archival photographs featuring the painter.

Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), Georgia O’Keeffe, 1953, gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Bequest of the artist, P1979.130.6, © 1979 Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Series I–No. I, 1918, oil on composition board. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchase with assistance from the Anne Burnett Tandy Accessions Fund, 1995.8, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Key works in the exhibition include the Dark Mesa with Pink Sky, from 1930; Ranchos Church, New Mexico, from 1930-31; Red Cannas, 1927; and Series I–No. I, from 1918. All are part of the museum’s permanent collection, and all are popular with other museums. “We are very much a lending museum, and there hasn’t been a single year that we haven’t received requests for these works. They are quite popular,” Reece-Hughes says.

Three other pieces in the show, and part of the museum collection, are a trio of pieces that make up the series Light Coming on the Plains. The pieces—number I, II and III—show varying stages of light on a dark horizon. The three watercolors were made in 1917 while O’Keeffe was teaching and running the art department at West Texas State Normal College. “These were created when she was in Canyon, Texas. She stayed up all night to watch the sunrise. She painted what she saw on very thin newsprint paper because it was very affordable. She truly evolved her aesthetic in Texas,” the curator says. “Light Coming on the Plains were kept in her personal collection because they were so important to her. She agreed to sell them only after the show at the Carter.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), A Portrait, 1923, gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, P2004.4.

Todd Webb (1905-2000), Georgia O’Keeffe, 1975, gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, P1975.40.3, © Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine USA.

After the O’Keeffe retrospective in 1966, the Amon Carter Museum continued to acquire important modernist works, including from many artists who ran in the Stieglitz and O’Keeffe circle. Today the museum is known as much for its modernism as its superb collection of Western works, of which it has many masterpieces, proving that O’Keeffe’s contribution to the museum would linger past 1966 and beyond.

Georgia O’Keeffe and the Carter continues through September 2027. —