Georgia O'Keeffe became the first woman to receive a solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented Georgia O'Keeffe: Retrospective Exhibition in 1946. The exhibition surveyed her career and was organized by the influential curator and historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. It recognized O'Keeffe as a major figure in American modernism rather than merely as a painter of flowers.
The distinction concerns a solo retrospective at MoMA. O'Keeffe had exhibited there before, and women artists had appeared in group exhibitions, but her 1946 show was the museum's first solo retrospective devoted to a woman artist. That institutional milestone reflected her growing critical importance after decades of work.
O'Keeffe later received other major honors and retrospectives, including a 1970 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The 1970 date is therefore associated with another important retrospective, not her first solo MoMA retrospective.