The Museum of Modern Art gave Georgia O'Keeffe its first retrospective for a woman artist in 1946.
The exhibition, titled Georgia O'Keeffe, opened in New York in 1946 and was organized by the curator and art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. It surveyed her career and established her importance within the history of American modernism.
The retrospective was significant because MoMA had opened in 1929 and was still shaping the public understanding of modern art. O'Keeffe's exhibition recognized a woman artist as the subject of a major career survey at a time when museum representation was heavily dominated by men.
The show was held shortly after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who died in July 1946. O'Keeffe later moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, but the MoMA retrospective helped secure her national reputation before that transition.