The Museum of Modern Art held Georgia O'Keeffe's first retrospective in 1946. The exhibition was a major institutional recognition of her career and is widely identified as the museum's first retrospective devoted to a woman artist.
By that time, O'Keeffe had already developed a distinctive body of work encompassing enlarged flowers, abstract paintings, New York architecture, and New Mexico landscapes. The retrospective helped establish her as a major figure in American modernism rather than merely as a regional or floral painter.
The 1946 exhibition took place at a crucial moment: Alfred Stieglitz died that same year, and O'Keeffe was managing his estate while continuing her own work. The retrospective should not be confused with later O'Keeffe exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art or with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which opened in Santa Fe in 1997.