Georgia O'Keeffe's first New York museum retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art was held in 1946. The exhibition recognized the importance of her work across several decades and established her as a major figure in American modern art.
A retrospective differs from a standard solo exhibition because it surveys an artist's career rather than focusing only on recent work. O'Keeffe's MoMA presentation brought together paintings and drawings that demonstrated her movement from early abstraction to flowers, bones, city subjects, and Southwestern imagery.
The 1946 exhibition occurred shortly after Alfred Stieglitz's death and during a turning point in O'Keeffe's life. She soon shifted her base permanently to New Mexico. The show is sometimes confused with later retrospectives at other museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, but the Museum of Modern Art's first retrospective dates to 1946.