Give Me Park Avenue September 1, 2006

Georgia O'Keeffe, Manhattan, 1932, oil, 84 3/8 x 48 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, 1995.3.1

Visitors may be surprised to learn that this glorious cityscape of Manhattan, hanging in our first-floor galleries, is by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), an artist known for her haunting desert landscapes and floral paintings.  In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art commissioned sixty-five painters and photographers to submit mural designs for an exhibition, Murals by American Painters and Photographers. They were asked to create a small mockup of a hypothetical mural, then develop one piece of the overall design into a large painting. O'Keeffe paired this large panel Manhattan with her smaller mural design. All the artists' works were exhibited at MoMA in May of that year.

Flowers are signature elements in O'Keeffe's work.  The floating flowers in this painting are different from the flowers in her other paintings. She based these on paper and cloth flowers that Hispanic women created in New Mexico. The posies are not the lilies and petunias of her earlier works.

Cassandra Good co-wrote to this post.

• Georgia O'Keeffe, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum