291 Gallery first exhibited Georgia O’Keeffe’s work in 1916.
The gallery was founded and run by photographer Alfred Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Its formal name was the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, but it became widely known simply as 291, after its address. Stieglitz used the space to introduce American audiences to photography and European modern art.
Anita Pollitzer showed Stieglitz some of O’Keeffe’s charcoal abstractions in 1916. Stieglitz responded by exhibiting them at 291 without O’Keeffe’s prior permission. The presentation brought her work to the attention of New York’s modern-art community and began a long professional relationship with Stieglitz.
The gallery closed in 1917 after relocating difficulties and financial pressures. Its role remains important because it helped establish O’Keeffe publicly before her later fame for flowers, New Mexico imagery, and monumental abstract forms.