The O’Keeffe Circle: Artist as Gallerist and Collector

The experimental paintings and drawings of Georgia O’Keeffe found their greatest early advocate in Alfred Stieglitz, the gallerist and photographer whom she married in 1924. Through Stieglitz, O’Keeffe was introduced to critics, collectors, and a collegial community of avant-garde painters with whom she showed her newest works. In time, several artists came to trust her to hang their shows at the galleries with the same careful, unerring eye that she brought to her own annual installation. In effect, O’Keeffe functioned as co-curator with the oracular Stieglitz, often moderating his enthusiasms with a dispassionate exactness. 

Quoting extensively from her letters, this small, two-room exhibition will explore O’Keeffe as a gallerist in New York and as a collector in her New York apartments and residences in New Mexico. She was highly judicious in selecting the art that shared her home, claiming that “My home is simple, but I aim to make it simpler!” The promised gift, O’Keeffe’s Cedar Tree with Lavender Hills, 1937, will be joined by works by Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Dove.

Reynolda is grateful for support from The Robert and Constance Emken Fund of the Winston-Salem Foundation.

In the online gallery below, view works included in The O’Keeffe Circle from Reynolda’s collection.

Select Artworks

Georgia O’Keeffe, Pool in the Woods, Lake George, 1922. Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse in memory of E. Carter, Nancy Susan Reynolds, and Winifred Babcock. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Georgia O’Keeffe, Cedar Tree with Lavender Hills, 1937. Promised Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse, © 2021 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Max Weber, The Dancers (1948), oil on canvas, Gift of Dorothy F. and Maynard J. Weber, Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Arthur Dove, Dancing (1934), oil on canvas. Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse. Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Abraham Walkowitz, Isadora Duncan (1916), colored crayon, watercolor, ink and graphite on paper, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Hirshhorn in honor of Nancy Susan Reynolds

Mardsen Hartley, End of Storm, Vinalhaven, Maine (1937-38), Courtesy of Barbara B. Millhouse.

Artists

Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Max Weber, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Henry Maurer, Abraham Walkowitz, Arthur Dove, Alexander Calder, Alan Ross, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Utagawa Hiroshige, Isamu Noguchi

UPDATE (August 17, 2021): The O’Keeffe Circle opening date has been moved from Sept. 10 to Sept. 14.