Georgia O'Keeffe studied at University of Virginia summer sessions in Virginia. She attended the sessions in 1912 and 1914, studying under Alon Bement, an art educator associated with new approaches to teaching.
The University of Virginia experience helped expose O'Keeffe to the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow emphasized composition, line, and color rather than requiring students to imitate nature literally. Those principles became important to O'Keeffe as she developed her own abstract visual language.
This period is often mixed up with her earlier schooling at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. O'Keeffe also taught art in Texas and South Carolina before her career as a full-time artist became established. The Virginia summer sessions were influential study periods, not a conventional four-year degree at the university.