Works of Georgia O’Keeffe’s sister to be exhibited

The exhibit will feature about 40 paintings, watercolors, prints and drawings by Ida O’Keeffe, along with photographs of her taken in the 1920s by her sister’s husband, acclaimed photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

“She possessed a very good eye. She was very skilled in the art of composition and also in technique,” said Sue Canterbury, curator of American art the museum and organizer of the exhibition.

Canterbury hopes the exhibit, titled “Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow,” will help reveal Ida O’Keeffe both as a person and an artist.

Canterbury said she first became aware of Ida O’Keeffe after viewing one of her works in a private collection a couple of years ago. As she started researching her, the idea for the exhibit was born. The exhibit’s works will mostly come from private collections across the country, Canterbury said, adding that she’s been reading through correspondence to learn more about Ida O’Keeffe.

“It’s still a voyage of discovery,” she said.

The exhibit will take museum-goers through three decades of Ida O’Keeffe’s career, beginning in the 1920s. Canterbury said she was particularly struck by a series of abstract representations of lighthouses done in the 1930s, a time period in which Ida O’Keeffe drew positive attention from art critics.

Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe, who died in 1961 at the age of 71, was the third of seven O’Keeffe children. She grew up in Wisconsin and was two years younger than her sister Georgia.

Ida O’Keeffe took art lessons growing up, worked as an adult as a teacher at various posts across the country and as a nurse. She graduated with a master’s in fine arts from Columbia in 1932, when she was in her 40s. She moved to Los Angeles in 1942 where she used her artistic skills as a draftsman for an aircraft company as part of the war effort.

Subsequent venues and dates for the exhibition tour will be announced later.