Georgia O'Keeffe’s first retrospective at the Whitney Museum was held in 1970.
The Whitney Museum of American Art presented a major retrospective of O'Keeffe's work in 1970. A retrospective surveys an artist's career rather than focusing on a single period or medium, making the exhibition an important recognition of her long development.
By then, O'Keeffe had been working for more than half a century. Her career included early abstract drawings, New York skyscraper paintings, enlarged flowers, New Mexico landscapes, animal bones, and later minimalist forms. The Whitney exhibition helped place the full range of that achievement before a broad museum audience.
The year 1946 is associated with a major Museum of Modern Art retrospective, while 1980 came later in O'Keeffe's life. Those dates are important but do not identify the Whitney retrospective.