Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation records

The Georgia O‘Keeffe Foundation, a self-limiting nonprofit organization, was established in May 1989 with the purpose of expanding and perpetuating the artistic legacy of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) for the public benefit. The foundation's defined term limit was twenty years from the receipt of O'Keeffe's assets, or 2006. Its mission included the documentation of O'Keeffe's work, the distribution of her assets, including more than one thousand paintings, drawings, and photographs, and the transition of her home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico, from a private residence to an historic house museum.

The foundation's Board of Directors consisted of five members, three of whom, as co-representatives of the artist's estate, were permanent appointments: O'Keeffe's grand-nephew Raymond R. Krueger, her niece June O'Keeffe Sebring, and her assistant Juan Hamilton. The first two elected directors were the art historians Richard R. Brettell and Charles C. Eldredge, who served from 1989-1995. Other pairs of directors elected over time were Vincent A. Carrozza and Bill Katz (1996-1998) and Anne d'Harnoncourt and Earl A. Powell III (1999-2006). The foundation's first (provisional) president was Santa Fe attorney Robert P. Worcester (1989-1990), followed by Elizabeth Glassman (1990-1998); Worcester was reappointed as president of the foundation in 1999. Agapita ("Pita") Judy Lopez was a director of the foundation from 1999-2006; she had worked for O'Keeffe during the last ten years of the artist's life, and was afterward employed by her estate. Lopez served as secretary/treasurer of the foundation from 1989-1996, and as assistant director from 1996-1999. The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation was headquartered in Abiquiu, and maintained a second office in Santa Fe from 1991-2002.

Distribution of the art in O'Keeffe's estate began with fifty-four works placed with eight museums with which she had had long-standing relationships: the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1992 the foundation expanded the program to include gifts to a wider range of museums, galleries, and historical societies around the country and the world, as well as to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (founded in Santa Fe in 1995). O'Keeffe's collection of Alfred Stieglitz photographs and photogravures was distributed to museums as well.

Expanding and perpetuating O'Keeffe's artistic legacy also took the form of promoting the exhibition of her work. The foundation oversaw the completion of the centennial show Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986 (1987-1989; traveled from the National Gallery to three American museums, accompanied by the publication Georgia O'Keeffe, Art and Letters), and was instrumental in the organization of two important exhibits: the artist's first international retrospective, Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern (1993-1994; administered by InterCultura and the United States Information Agency) and The Book Room: Georgia O'Keeffe's Library in Abiquiu (1997; organized with the Grolier Club, New York, and also shown in Santa Fe). Foundation staff members were closely involved in three major traveling exhibitions organized by museums, O'Keeffe on Paper (2000), O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: the Artist's Collection (2001-2002), and Georgia O'Keeffe: Color and Conservation (2006), and regularly sent loans from the foundation's collection to various American and international projects. The foundation's most substantial effort regarding the artist's legacy, however, was the two-volume Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, which it published in 1999 with the National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press.

Other initiatives focused on the commemoration of Georgia O'Keeffe's life. Since 1989 the foundation had undertaken measures to preserve and maintain the home she had purchased in Abiquiu in 1945, as well as its contents and gardens, while offering limited public tours of the property. In 1996 the foundation implemented a Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), then oversaw the O'Keeffe Home and Studio's designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1998 and its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. An oral history project was begun in 1999, with the goal of recording and transcribing interviews with O'Keeffe's surviving relatives, colleagues, friends, and employees. And in 1995 the foundation worked closely with the United States Postal Service to create the Georgia O'Keeffe commemorative postage stamp issued in Santa Fe on May 23, 1996.

A great part of the foundation's work was stewardship over the copyright of all of O'Keeffe's paintings, drawings, sculptures, and writings, and staff members were vigilant in granting, denying, and policing all public and private attempts to reproduce O'Keeffe images in any format, regardless of who owned the artwork or literary papers. The foundation worked with the Artists Rights Society (ARS) to help monitor and coordinate intellectual property rights and to collect reproduction fees, which produced a significant income stream. In addition to all of the above projects, the foundation donated funds to a number of community organizations and charities, mostly local schools, churches, and groups to which O'Keeffe had made contributions during her lifetime.

The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation transferred its residual assets, including the remainder of O'Keeffe's artwork, her book collection, some research papers and archival materials, and the Abiquiu home and studio, to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in 2006. The foundation transferred its records and Georgia O'Keeffe's financial, legal, and medical papers to the Beinecke Library in 2009; the latter group of material comprises the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe Archive Addition (YCAL MSS 345).