'Sublime' O'Keeffe exhibit coming to UMMA

Updated 10:00 AM July 6, 2004

'Sublime' O'Keeffe exhibit coming to UMMA

By Stephanie Rieke
Museum of Art

The U-M Museum of Art (UMMA) will present "Georgia O'Keeffe and the Sublime Landscape," an exhibition that re-examines the work of one of the world's most iconic artists, July 11-Sept. 26.

Spanning five decades, the exhibition features more than 35 paintings, some drawings and one sculpture by O'Keeffe, together with paintings by American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Martin Johnson Heade and George Inness from the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Also included are photographs by O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and noted American photographer Todd Webb. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a comprehensive, illustrated catalogue with essays by noted scholars and artists, will embark on a national tour after the UMMA show.

"'Georgia O'Keeffe and the Sublime Landscape' wholly embraces UMMA's educational mission to present the work of outstanding visual artists within the framework of new and exciting scholarship," says James Steward, director of the museum.

O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is well known for her studies of enlarged flowers and bleached animal bones in the southwestern desert.

She began her compositions by using design as an organizing principle and moves between realism and abstraction. Images such as "Untitled (Desert Abstraction) (Bear Lake)" (1931) and "From the River-Light Blue" (1964) translate earth, water and sky into geometric bands of color and light. Manipulation of scale, use of fragments, precise lines and blurred edges, and bold colors all combine to create works that serve as reflections of O'Keeffe's private emotional experiences.

Vintage black-and-white photographs, from the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., by Stieglitz (1864-1946) include his cloud studies "Equivalents," which were inspired by O'Keeffe's art. Stieglitz's seminal images of O'Keeffe from the 1920s and 1930s complement the exhibition and explore how the two influenced each other's work.

Rounding out the exhibition is a selection of more informal and candid photographs of O'Keeffe by Todd Webb (1905-2000), provided by the Evans Gallery—Todd Webb Trust (Portland, Maine) from the 1950s and 1960s, in the places she lived and cherished—Abiquiu, Glen Canyon and Ghost Ranch.

The exhibition includes works of art loaned by institutions across North America, including the Amarillo Art Museum; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiu; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Honolulu Academy of Arts; The Menil Collection, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe; National Gallery of Art; Phoenix Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The exhibition is organized by Joseph Czestochowski and circulated by International Arts of Memphis. It was made possible by the assistance of The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiu, N.M.; George Eastman House, Rochester (Alfred Stieglitz Collection); and the Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe (Georgia O'Keeffe Collection).

The Ann Arbor presentation of the exhibition is made possible in part by Ford Motor Co. Additional support has been provided by the Office of the Provost, Pfizer Global Research & Development, the Mosaic Foundation (of R. & P. Heydon), Michigan Radio, Borders Group, the Ann Arbor News, and the State Street Area Association.

For more information, call (734) 763-UMMA.

'Sublime' O'Keeffe exhibit coming to UMMA

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