What was Georgia O'Keeffe's first major American museum retrospective?

Georgia O'Keeffe's first major American museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented the retrospective shortly after the death of O'Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz. The exhibition surveyed her career and confirmed her importance in the development of American modernism.

O'Keeffe had already received substantial gallery attention, especially through Stieglitz’s 291 gallery and later American Place. A museum retrospective, however, gave her work a broader institutional context and positioned her alongside major modern artists.

The exhibition is sometimes confused with her 1970 Whitney Museum retrospective, which was a later landmark. That Whitney show helped introduce her work to a new generation and contributed to a major revival of public interest. The 1946 MoMA exhibition remains notable because it was the first major museum retrospective devoted to her.