Which museum held Georgia O’Keeffe’s first retrospective exhibition in 1943?

The Art Institute of Chicago held Georgia O’Keeffe’s first retrospective exhibition in 1943. A retrospective gathers works from across an artist’s career, allowing viewers to see development rather than a single period or theme.

By 1943, O’Keeffe was already widely recognized for her abstract works, enlarged flowers, New York paintings, and New Mexico imagery. The Chicago exhibition helped establish her as a major American artist rather than simply as a painter associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery circle.

The Art Institute of Chicago had a special connection to O’Keeffe because she studied there from 1905 to 1906. Her later retrospective therefore returned her work to a city where her formal art education had begun. The museum’s exhibition history is distinct from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which opened decades later in Santa Fe.