Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA)_The pink painting of Mt. Fuji calms my mind.

Santa Fe, New Mexico. Admire Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting of Mt. Fuji at the adobe-designed museum and imagine what Japan would look like in 1959.

Art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. This museum exhibits artworks exclusively by Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist who is a symbol of American modernism.

Santa Fe is a city with a long history, founded in 1610. It is famous for its landscape of ocher-colored buildings made from organic materials such as sand and sandy clay called adobe. Also, perhaps because the altitude is over 2,000m, the clouds in the blue sky behind the adobe building are low, making it an impressive location.

This museum opened in 1997. It has been 11 years since Georgia O’Keeffe passed away. The building is, of course, an adobe building that symbolizes Santa Fe. It is about a 5-minute walk from Santa Fe Plaza in the heart of downtown Santa Fe.

There were nine exhibition rooms in the museum. Although not extensive, it covers Georgia O’Keeffe’s artworks from each era. Artworks from his early career, including before he came to New Mexico, were also on display. Flowers, cow horns, mountains. There are artworks that fuse Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic landscapes and abstractions.

When I visited in 2024, six to seven of the nine exhibition rooms had artworks painted in New Mexico. I had participated in the Abiquiu Home & Studio tour the day before, and it was very interesting to see artworks from Abiquiu and its surrounding areas on display.

In room 9 at the very back, there were kimono and tenugui she bought when she visited Japan in 1959, as well as her diary from that time. The diary was written by typewriter, not by handwriting. She may have carried a typewriter all the way to Japan. Also there was a painting of Mt. Fuji colored in pink. It seems that he painted it after returning to Japan with the image of Japan in mind.

According to my guide during Abiquiu’s Home & Studio tour, Georgia O’Keeffe traveled to around 50 countries, and a variety of places, including Japan had influenced her.

By the way, I visited this museum in 2004, but to be honest, I was not impressed. At that time, I remember that the exhibition room was limited and the number of artworks was extremely limited. Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork may be often loaned out because she is popular all over the world. This depends on the situation at the time of your visit, so it would be a good idea to check in advance.

In addition, to avoid this mistake, I think it would be a good idea to visit the Home & Studio tour run by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Abiquiu. Here you can see the residence and studio where Georgia O’Keeffe lived, and I think it is a very memorable place, including the surrounding scenery.