Which 1970 museum retrospective helped establish Georgia O'Keeffe as a major modernist?

The 1970 Georgia O'Keeffe retrospective at the Whitney Museum helped establish her as a major modernist.

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York presented a major retrospective of O'Keeffe’s work in 1970. The exhibition surveyed her career rather than treating her only as a painter of flowers or Southwestern scenes. It helped bring renewed critical attention to the range of her abstractions, cityscapes, flowers, bones, and landscapes.

The retrospective was especially significant because O'Keeffe had often been discussed through biographical narratives about Stieglitz or through narrow assumptions about feminine subject matter. A broad museum survey encouraged viewers and scholars to consider her formal decisions and long artistic development on their own terms.

O'Keeffe was 82 when the Whitney retrospective opened. She continued working afterward, including with assistants as her eyesight declined. The exhibition therefore represented a major reassessment during her lifetime, not merely a posthumous celebration.