Which university did Georgia O’Keeffe attend in 1914 and 1915?

Georgia O’Keeffe attended Columbia University in 1914 and 1915.

O’Keeffe studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College under the influential art educator and artist Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow encouraged students to think in terms of design, composition, and the expressive possibilities of line, color, and form rather than simply copying what they saw.

This approach mattered greatly to O’Keeffe. After years of conventional academic training, Dow’s ideas helped her move toward a more personal and abstract visual language. Her charcoal drawings from 1915, made soon after this period of study, were among the first works she considered genuinely her own.

O’Keeffe did not complete a degree at Columbia during this period. She had previously studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. Later, she taught art in Texas and South Carolina while continuing to develop her work. Columbia’s Teachers College is therefore best understood as an important stage in her artistic education, not as the institution from which she graduated.