Editor's note: The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum provided source material to Resource Library for the following article. If you have questions or comments regarding the source material, please contact the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum directly through either this phone number or web address:
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities
May 23 - September 7, 2008
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is presenting Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities, May 23 - September 7, 2008. This project brings together for the first time approximately 97 works by two of America's best-known artists, demonstrating the Museum's ongoing commitment to presenting O'Keeffe's work together with those of her contemporaries, which makes it possible to define her achievement within the context of American modernism (1890s - present).
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams met when both were in Taos, New Mexico, in 1929, which initiated a lifelong friendship. In 1933, Adams traveled from California to New York for the first time and met O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, the éminence grise of American modernist photography. The two became friends and during his subsequent trips to New York, Adams always visited and spent time with Stieglitz and O'Keeffe.
Adams and O'Keeffe shared a deep and profound appreciation of the natural world, and in 1937, they traveled together with other friends to explore sites in the Southwest, and in 1938, O'Keeffe and others joined Adams for a pack trip in the Yosemite High Sierra. O'Keeffe and Adams wrote one another from time-to-time and portions of Adam's last visit with O'Keeffe at her Abiquiu house in 1981 were included in the documentary film of his life and art, Ansel Adams: Photographer (1981).
During their lifetimes, O'Keeffe and Adams became two of America's most celebrated icons. This exhibition explores for the first time the significance of each artist's achievement in capturing the reality and essence of the world around them as painter and photographer, and it clarifies various parallels between their distinctive visions of the natural world.
The exhibition was organized by Anne Hammond, who was a Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center honorary scholar in 2001, the year the Research Center opened.
Exhibition catalogue
An exhibition catalogue, published by Little, Brown, and Company accompanies this exhibition, and reproduces all of the works in the exhibit as well as essays by journalist Richard B. Woodard, Barbara Buhler Lynes, Curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and the Emily Fisher Landau Director, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, and Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Exhibition itinerary
Following its presentation in Santa Fe, the exhibition will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Foreword and acknowledgements from the exhibition catalogue
Foreword
With the exhibition and publication of "Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities," the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is pleased to present a project that brings together for the first time the work of two of America's best-known artists. It thus demonstrates our ongoing commitment to presenting O'Keeffe's work together with those of her contemporaries, which makes it possible to define her achievement within the context of American modernism.
Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams met when both were in Taos, New Mexico, in 1929, which initiated a close and lifelong friendship. In 1933, Adams traveled from California to New York for the first time and met O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, the éminence grise of American modernist photography. The two became friends and during his subsequent trips to New York, Adams always visited and spent time with Stieglitz and O'Keeffe.
Adams and O'Keeffe shared a deep and profound appreciation of the natural world, and in 1937, they traveled together with other friends to explore sites in the Southwest. Then, in 1938, O'Keeffe and others joined Adams for a pack trip in the Yosemite High Sierra. O'Keeffe and Adams wrote one another from time to time, and portions of Adams' last visit with O'Keeffe at her Abiquiu house in 1981 were included in the documentary film of his life and art, Ansel Adams: Photographer (1981).
During their lifetimes, O'Keeffe and Adams became two of America's most celebrated icons. This publication explores, for the first time, the significance of each artist's achievement in capturing the reality and essence of the world around them as painter and photographer and clarifies various parallels between their distinctive visions of the natural world.
Anne Hammond, who was an Honorary Research Scholar at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's Research Center in 2001 and is a specialist on the work of Ansel Adams, has served as the exhibition's guest curator. We wish to thank her for her work as well as those who contributed the insightful essays published in the exhibition catalog: journalist Richard B. Woodard; Barbara Buhler Lynes, Curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and the Emily Fisher Landau Director, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center; and Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Following its presentation in Santa Fe, the exhibition will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We are grateful to each organization for its participation and for agreeing to host the exhibition.
It is with great enthusiasm that we present this timely exhibition and publication that will surely add to the broader understanding of the achievements of both artists.
-- George G. King, Director, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Acknowledgments
The efforts of many have made this exhibition and its catalog possible, and we want to express our gratitude to those upon whose help and collaboration we have depended. First, we wish to thank Michael and Jeanne Adams, as well as the private collectors and institutions that have generously loaned to this exhibition and provided permission to reproduce their works in the catalog, especially the Center for Creative Photography, Douglas R. Nickel, its former director, Trinity Parker, Registrar, and Andrew Smith, Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In addition, we wish to thank individuals at various museums and galleries who have been of enormous help: Douglas A. Fairfield, Curator of Art, Albuquerque Museum; Rebecca E. Lawton, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Amon Carter Museum; Gloria Ruff, Assistant Curator/Registrar, Brauer Museum of Art; Hilarie Faberman, Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University; Richard Armstrong, The Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art; Trudy Wilner Stack, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; Suzan Campbell, Gund Curator of Western Art, History and Culture, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art; Gail Kana Anderson, Curator and Interim Director, Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma; Kristin Hileman, Assistant Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Heather Lammers, Collection Manager, The Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum; Joe Ketner, Chief Curator, Milwaukee Art Museum; Emily Ballew Neff, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Cora Rosevear, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture and Eva Respini, Assistant Curator of Photography, Museum of Modern Art; Marsha C. Bol, Director, New Mexico Museum of Art (formerly Museum of Fine Arts); Karol Lurie, Curatorial Administrator, Norton Museum of Art; Hansen Mulford, Curator, Orlando Museum of Art; Rebecca Eddins, Director of Collections Management, Reynolda House Museum of American Art; Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Linda Muehlig, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Smith College Museum of Art; Susan Earle, Curator of European and American Art, Spencer Museum of Art; Angela Carter, Assistant Registrar, St. Louis Art Museum; Susannah Maurer, Assistant Curator, University of Arizona Museum of Art; Barbara Haskell, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; Jock Reynolds, The Henry J. Heinz II Director, Yale University Art Gallery.
Our deep gratitude to Anne Hammond, guest curator, who is currently Research Fellow in Photography at the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol and was an honorary scholar at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center in 2001, and to those who have contributed to the exhibition catalog, journalist Richard B. Woodard, and Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A special thank you goes to Lamar Lynes.
Others who have contributed in countless other ways to the realization of the exhibition include the following individuals from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: George King, director, who support of the exhibition has been ongoing; Heather Hole, Assistant Curator; Judy Chiba Smith, Registrar and Collections Manager; Jackie Hall, Director of Development, Kaaren Boullosa, Grant Writer/Researcher, Dale Kronkright, conservator; and April Swieconik, Marketing and Public Relations Specialist.
Many thanks to individuals at institutions hosting the exhibition: at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Elizabeth Broun, Margaret and Terry Stent Director, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Chief Curator, Eleanor Jones Harvey; at the Norton Museum of Art, Christina Orr-Cahill, Director, Karol Lurie, Curatorial Administrator, and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Neal Benezra, Director, and Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Also, our deepest gratitude to those at the Little, Brown, and Company who provided careful guidance and attendance to all details of the exhibition catalog: Jean Griffin, Publishing Director, Ansel Adams; Michael L. Sand, Executive Editor; Peggy Freudenthal, Senior Copyediting Manager; and Zinzi Clemmons, Editorial Assistant.
We are also very grateful to those providing funding for this exhibition: Lead National Sponsor, MetLife Foundation; Members of the National Council, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
-- Barbara Buhler Lynes, Curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
-- The Emily Fisher Landau Director, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center
(above: Georgia O'Keeffe, Grey Cross with Blue, 1929, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, CR 671, The Albuquerque Museum. Museum Purchase, 1983 and 1985 General Obligation Bonds; Albuquerque Museum Foundation; Ovenwest Corporation; Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.)
(above: Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Hills with Cedar, 1942, oil on canvas, 16 x 30 inches, CR 1040, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981. © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Photography by Lee Stalsworth.)
(above: Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II, 1930, oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 inches, CR 730, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation. © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.)
Special events
Editor's note: readers may also enjoy:
approximately 280 other Resource Library articles and essays citing Georgia O'Keeffe, including these selected texts:
online audio:
The National Gallery of Art offers on
its web site O'Keeffe
on Paper. Barbara Buhler Lynes, co-curator of the exhibition,
author of Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, curator of
the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and Emily Fisher Landau Director
of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, discuss new insights on
the stunning watercolors, charcoals, and pastels presented in the exhibition
of O'Keeffe's most innovative works on paper. Aired May 6, 2000.
(description courtesy NGA)
online video:
The WGBH/Boston
Forum Network includes a number of videos on Art
and Architecture. Partners include a number of Boston-area museums,
colleges, universities and other cultural organizations. The Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston partnered with the Forum Network for Modern Art in America,
(43 minutes) in which Heather Cotter, Museum of Fine Arts Gallery Lecturer,
gives an overview of the roots of American modern art using examples from
the Museum's collection. This talk in the galleries of the Museum of Fine
Arts investigates the foundations of modern art in America, focusing on
works by Georgia O'Keefe, Arthur Dove, Charles Sheeler, and Stuart Davis.
[September 28, 2003]
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum offers a
video
(03:24) relating to the Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural
Affinities exhibit.
Footage
(09:57) of the 92 year old Georgia O'Keeffe taken in and around her home
in New Mexico (from YouTube)
Georgia
O'Keeffe: Notable New Mexican.
(05:05) A look at the life and artistic brilliance of Georgia O'Keeffe.
Ranked among the vanguard of modern art, her paintings vividly portrayed
the power and emotion of objects of nature. During the 1920s, she explored
this theme in her paintings of flowers. Her purpose was to convey that
nature in all its beauty was as powerful as the widespread industrialization
of the period. After spending a summer at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico,
she began a life-long love affair with the area. Enthralled by the barren
landscape and expansive skies she explored these subjects in her paintings.
Just as with the flowers, she painted the desert area magnifying and capturing
the stillness and remoteness, while expressing a sense of beauty that lies
within the desert. Her paintings have become synonymous with Ghost Ranch,
introducing the area to the rest of the world. Orginally broadcast on New
Mexico PBS station KNME
VHS videos:
Georgia O'Keeffe was produced
by Perry Miller Adato in 1977 by WNET for The Originals: Women in Art
series and distributed by the Educational Broadcasting Corporation. The
video is 59 minutes long and is self-narrated by O'Keeffe. The artist talks
candidly about her work and life, showing how nature and the mountains and
desert of New Mexico figure prominently in her work. The video includes
comments by sculptor Juan Hamilton, who was her assistant, and critics Barbara
Rose and Daniel Catton Rich.
Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life in Art Adato, Perry Miller, producer and director. A 2002 video from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe. The Museum's orientation film created by the acclaimed, award-winning filmaker Perry Miller Adato. The film presents O'Keeffe's life and the origins and development of her art. VHS and DVD.
Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz 60 minute / 1998 / CTC - "Alfred
Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, companions in life and art in spite of a
23-year age difference, symbolize the juxtapositions characteristics of
the American modernist period. In this program, Professor Wanda Corn from
Stanford University uses O'Keeffe's paintings and Stieglitz's photographs
to show the impact each had on the other's work and on the evolution of
American art. Corn emphasizes the artistic collaboration between the couple
and points out O'Keeffe's modernist style of abstraction in her use of strong
form and color and unusual vantage point on a traditional subject. As O'Keeffe
is influenced by her sojourns to New Mexico, so does her art consciously
change in subject matter as a reflection of her strong artistic spirit and
determination to reconnect with traditional America." Quotes are from
the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts.
Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye is a 90 minute 2000 American Masters series WNET video directed by Perry Miller Adato. From the Back Cover: "Stieglitz, who is revered as one of the most innovative photographers of the 20th century, played a primary role in fostering new talent. Through his three galleries in New York City, he mentored emerging artists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Georgia O'Keeffe; and introduced avant-garde Europeans such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin and Pablo Picasso.... This revealing look at "The Father of Modern Photography" features a rare interview with Georgia O'Keeffe, Stieglitz's wife and muse, as well as archival footage of other artistic giants he inspired, including Edward Steichen and John Marin. Additionally, the film presents countless images from the Stieglitz archives, ranging from early European peasant life to later views of New York's urban landscape." VHS/DVD
these additional Resource Library articles and essays concerning Ansel Adams and American photography:
more articles on American photography:
and these videos:
Ansel Adams is a 100
minute 2002 American Experience PBS Home Video directed by Ric Burns and
Narrated by David Ogden Stiers. From Warner Home Video. Ansel Adams's photographs
have made him one of the most recognized and admired names in art. A staunch
environmentalist, the pictures that Adams took reflected a larger world
view the photographer held to strongly.
Ansel Adams, Photographer 60 minutes "This film captures the spirit and artistry of the man as he talks about his life and demonstrates the techniques that have made his work legendary. As Adams talks of the country he loves, viewers glimpse his photographs juxtaposed with the landscapes he photographed. In a conversation with artist Georgia O'Keeffe, Adams discusses his association with her husband, pioneer photographer Alfred Steiglitz." "Outlines the long and prolific career of American photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) as an artist, conservationist, and teacher. Follows him to the locations of his most famous photographs, including Yosemite." [2] By John Huszar. 1986 (available through Las Positas College Library)
Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History. Individual pages in this catalogue will be amended as TFAO adds content, corrects errors and reorganizes sections for improved readability.
rev. 5/27/08, 12/10/10
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Resource Library.
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