Which national award did Georgia O'Keeffe receive from President Ronald Reagan in 1985?

Georgia O'Keeffe received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

The National Medal of Arts is the highest United States honor specifically given for achievement in the arts. O'Keeffe received the award near the end of her life, recognizing her major contribution to American painting and modernism.

By 1985, her career had already spanned more than seven decades. She had developed a distinctive body of work involving abstraction, enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, New Mexico landscapes, adobe architecture, and animal bones. Her influence extended well beyond any single subject or period.

The award is not the same as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which O'Keeffe received later, in 1986, from President Reagan. She also received the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1986, so the two honors are easy to conflate when recalling her final years.