When you think of Georgia O’Keeffe, you may think of natural scenes, flowers, or flowers that, in turn, may make you think of other things. But lesser appreciated is her perspective on the “built landscape”: the houses, barns, skyscrapers, factories and bridges she painted over the years. And that’s what the Detroit Institute of Arts hopes to shed light on with its newest exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture. And fittingly, its opening on Friday, Sept. 11 coincides with Detroit Month of Design.
The exhibition showcases 35 works O’Keeffe created between the 1920s and 1960s. Chronicling her evolving style, the collection follows O’Keeffe through Lake George, New York; New York City; and rural New Mexico, the place where the Wisconsin native discovered she felt most at home.
“There’s a number of things I love about the exhibition,” DIA director Salvador Salort-Pons told a crowd of museum members at a preview event on Sept. 9. “First of all, the quality of the works, how beautifully they are installed throughout the galleries. …You walk around, see the paintings and you just learn visually about Georgia O’Keeffe.”
An Autobiographical Lens
While the paintings in Architecture showcase O’Keeffe’s style, they also offer a window into her personal life.
“These are some of O’Keeffe’s most autobiographical works, the paintings that trace her life story, that show us places that were especially meaningful to her, places where she lived, where she made her art, and show how incredibly dedicated she was as an observer of the architecture most familiar to her,” says Ben Colman, curator for American Art at the DIA.
From richly detailed depictions of pueblos and the Brooklyn Bridge to sparse abstractions of windows and doors, the exhibition highlights O’Keeffe’s range and signature style which helped pioneer modern art.
“Georgia O’Keeffe as painter defined the look and possibilities of modern art making in the United States,” says Colman. “She created a style that is still, for so many people, synonymous with American art in the 20th century. She’s someone who is really important to understand, to have a better understanding of what it meant for artists to confront the world around them in the 20th century.”
How Stables Sparked the Idea
Colman tells Hour Detroit he’s had the idea for the exhibition brewing since shortly after he joined the museum staff in 2015. It was around that time that he began studying Stables, which is the only O’Keeffe work in the museum’s permanent collection. The 1932 oil on canvas depicts a sideview of a large stable and a smaller building to its left, with green grass and a cloudy blue-sky backdrop. Both buildings have white walls, burgundy roofs, and grey doors and windows. It is part of a small series of similar paintings she produced around this time; one called White Canadian Barn, No. 2 is part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.
Coleman calls Stables “a really extraordinary painting.” He adds, “It’s so abstracted and direct in the way she uses color and geometry. …It really inspired me to think about the ways that architecture served so many roles for O’Keeffe over the decades and that she really studied and focused on it as a subject in her paintings.”
Coleman has a history of curating exhibitions highlighting functional design. He was the force behind the DIA’s Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City, 1950–2020 in 2021, which showcased significant American car designs and explored the intersection between the automotive industry and the art world.
Immersive Experiences
Interspersed with the paintings are two large-scale projections, with video produced by the DIA team. One approximates O’Kieffe’s view from her apartment window in New York’s Shelton Hotel. It was here that she painted several of the works in the exhibition, including East River from the 30th Story of the Shelton Hotel (1928), a stark view of the industrial waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens.
A second view brings the exhibitgoer to the center patio of her home in Abiquiú, New Mexico, a subject she painted dozens of times throughout the span of her career.
Another part of the exhibition invites visitors to draw different styles of architecture from reference models, including a traditional Puebloan home and Detroit’s Penobscot Building.
Georgia and Detroit
Like many imporant American figures, O’Keeffe had several Detroit connections. She knew various members of the Saarinen family and once considered painting a mural for Eero Saarinen’s John Deere headquarters in Moline, Illinois. (Though it never came to fruition, it would inspire her work Sky the Clouds IV).
She was also acquainted with the prolific artist and former Detroit resident Frida Kahlo; the two wrote several letters to one another that have been preserved. They first met at Diego Rivera’s 1931 solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, according to the 2020 book Frida in America. The following year, Kahlo and Rivera moved to Detroit, and Rivera started the DIA’s Detroit Industry Murals, which were completed in 1933.
And, while O’Keeffe was living in New Mexico, she became good friends with the architect and designer Alexander Girard, who spent many years living in Grosse Pointe Farms, during which he curated a show at the DIA.
O’Keeffe herself exhibited in Detroit during her lifetime, but that was over 100 years ago. “In 1934, there was a show of paintings by a then young American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, at the Society for Arts and Crafts,” says Coleman. “So, it’s been a long, long time since a presentation like this of her paintings has taken place in Detroit.”
Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture is on display from Sept. 11 through Jan. 3, 2027. This exhibition is free for members. For residents of Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties, tickets are $20 for adults, and $10 for college students/youth (this pricing is only available in-person). General admission pricing is $30 for adults, $15 for college students/youth. Residents of Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties are able to visit the exhibition free on Sept. 30, Oct. 25, and Dec. 11.
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