Books & Blossoms

For those who love books (anyone reading this column, probably), the personal library can be like a window to the soul: the contents, the arrangement, the marginalia. When the concept intersects with an iconic artist, however, the implications are fascinating.

This is true of Georgia O’Keeffe’s own library at her home in Abiquiú, which the artist built up over decades, and which the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is now in the process of transferring to its Santa Fe facilities with the help of National Endowment for the Humanities grant for approximately $87,000. Once there, the collection will be made accessible to the public by appointment, and even show up in exhibits from time to time.

“This collection really does show the breadth of her interest,” the museum’s Head of Research Collections and Services Liz Ehrnst says. “There’s a lot that gives insight to her life and artistic practice in the books that she kept.”

Until now, the collection has been housed in a space known as the Book Room at O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiquiú—a small adobe room brimming with the artist’s collection of saved museum bulletins; travel ephemera; books about bullfighting; tomes on Japanese and Chinese arts and culture; photographs; first editions and many more oddities (who knew O’Keeffe kept an extensive collection of Prevention magazines, or that she had a box where she kept manuals for household appliances alongside X-rays of feet and teeth?). Some books have inscriptions from friends and colleagues, some focus on other artists; the O’Keeffe collection notably contains more than 100 cookbooks, too, plus notable titles such as Duchamp’s Some French moderns says McBride, a copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol and a first edition of Lady Chatterly’s Lover alongside rare magazines such as Laughing Horse and The Phoenix.

And, while the Book Room is delightful in keeping with the artist’s signature aesthetic, it hasn’t been open to the public, largely due to its preservation limitations—most of the time, the shelves must be draped in plastic and the windows blacked out to protect them. By transferring the materials to the Michael S. Engl Family Foundation Library and Archive in Santa Fe (135 Grant St., (505) 946-1000), museum staff will have better control over climate conditions for starters. Ehrnst says the plans intend to largely retain O’Keeffe’s own arrangement; part of the ongoing strategy for exhibitions includes hi-res photos of the collection for the museum’s website.

Furthermore, Ehrnst notes, the project should help fans, patrons, scholars and newcomers better understand O’Keeffe as a person, rather than solely as an artist.

“It definitely shows different connections between the circles of people in her life,” Ehrnst tells SFR, pointing to a copy of Jean Toomer’s Cane, which bears this inscription from the writer himself: “To Alfred Stieglitz, for whom an adequate inscription will be written in that book which is equal to me.”

And that’s just one item from the period of long-distance courtship between photographer Steglitz and O’Keeffe. Who knows what else might be lurking within the collection?

Ehrnst says she particularly looks forward to bringing the library to Santa Fe to afford museum-goers an opportunity to explore the subjects as O’Keeffe herself designated them, or even just browse the artist’s disparate areas of interests. The insights O’Keeffe’s library provides into her life and work might be the main draw—but it’s hardly the only one. Several pieces stand on their own for their rarity or beauty; then there are the first editions and even the endpapers. One DH Lawrence book, for example, has drawn people to the collection just to see its unique marbled paper.

The opportunities for discovering something noteworthy spiral out from there. Still, there is a bittersweet element in taking the books from their longtime home.

“There’s this romantic notion of that nice little room up there in Abiquiú, but it really doesn’t serve anyone there,” Ehrnst says. “It’s so wonderful to have a collection like this, and it should be used.”

To sweeten the deal, potential exhibits at the library and archives and/or the museum itself won’t always center on O’Keeffe. Sometimes they’ll feature varying themes extrapolated from the collection and, toward the end of this year, the museum will feature authors of the modernist era, including the poet-artist Stettheimer sisters.

The grant ends in September 2025, but Ehrnst intends to complete the move by the end of this year. A visit to the library and archives in Santa Fe is already worthwhile for O’Keeffe fans, too, as certain particularly fragile or valuable materials from the Abiquiú library are already housed there, alongside O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch library and other materials. Additionally, the current display in the library, Georgia O’Keeffe: Finding Words, shows examples of the artist’s own writing practice, including correspondence and published works.

“There’s kind of a legend that she didn’t write anything down or describe her work, but in fact she was a pretty prolific correspondent,” Ehrnst explains. “Many of her letters will transport you right to the New Mexico landscape when she’s writing about a scene that she witnessed, like a storm moving through at Ghost Ranch—it gives you chills. You feel like you were there.”