Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘Lake George’ abstraction is part of the University Museum’s permanent collection.
The University of Mississippi Museum has more than 20,000 objects in its collection, and in honor of the museum’s 75th anniversary this year, the Ole Miss News Blog is featuring 75 different items from its collections.
Today, we feature the museum’s Georgia O’Keeffe abstraction of Lake George.
The piece, which was created in 1918, is an oil painting on a board and was given to the museum by Semour Lawrence. Lawrence was a publisher who introduced the country to many great new writers during his career, including Katherine Anne Porter, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah, Jim Harrison and Joseph Heller.
When Oxford resident writer Barry Hannah brought Lawrence to Oxford, he fell in love with the town and purchased a home near Rowan Oak. When Lawrence died in 1994, his collection of American art came to the museum. It includes the O’Keeffe painting, plus paintings by Marsden Hartley, Man Ray, Arthur Dove and many other important artists.
The museum’s description of the piece contains a nice biography of O’Keefe.
Raised on a Wisconsin farm, Georgia O’Keeffe showed early promise in painting. Her formal training in imitative realism at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York proved unfulfilling, and became the catalyst for the development of her own style. Early charcoal drawings sent to a friend from Columbia University in 1916 were passed on to Alfred Stieglitz, photographer and owner of avant-garde 291 Gallery in New York. Stieglitz began corresponding with O’Keeffe and exhibited her work, later offering her financial support for a career in New York. After arriving in New York, she and Stieglitz fell in love and were married in 1924. After Stieglitz’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe moved to New Mexico and created another half-century of work. Perhaps, most notably, her closely focused, large-scale images of flowers. She secured wide acclaim and recognition for her work in her lifetime, and died at the age of 98.
As part of the museum’s anniversary celebration, admission is free through Aug. 8, 2015. There will be a lot to see as the museum introduces several new exhibits and unveils a new major gift as well as the reinstallation of the David M. Robinson Collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in the Mary Buie building.
The first of the 75 items to be featured was the Volute Krater, an ancient Greek artifact.
To see a complete list of upcoming events and information on the new exhibitions, click here.
The University Museum is open to the public 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The museum is closed Mondays and regular university holidays. Its facilities are handicapped-accessible. For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-7084.