The Whitney Museum presented its first retrospective devoted to Georgia O'Keeffe in 1970.
A retrospective surveys an artist's career rather than focusing on one period or series. The Whitney Museum of American Art's 1970 exhibition marked an important institutional recognition of O'Keeffe's achievement and presented her work to a broad national audience.
By that time, O'Keeffe had spent decades developing a body of work that included abstraction, flowers, New York architecture, animal bones, and New Mexico landscapes. The exhibition helped confirm her place as a major figure in American modernism.
The date is sometimes mixed up with later museum exhibitions or with the opening of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The museum in Santa Fe opened in 1997, while the Whitney retrospective occurred in 1970.