Georgia O’Keeffe: Ghost Ranch
1 October 2027 – 30 January 2028
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
The Courtauld has announced a major exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: Ghost Ranch, opening in Autumn 2027.
The exhibition will be the first devoted to the remarkable landscapes produced by the pioneering American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) at and around her home and studio at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. These works, created over two decades from the mid 1930s to 1950s, form one of the most significant and original groups of landscape paintings of the 20th century and transcend the conventions of the genre. Almost two dozen works will make up the show, with most of them having never before been shown in the UK.
In 1929, O’Keeffe’s life and art underwent a dramatic change when she began spending time in the remote desert landscapes of northern New Mexico. Transfixed by their unique light, vast skies and rugged terrain, she returned for longer periods every year throughout the 1930s, deepening her connection to the region which would eventually become her home. In 1934 she discovered Ghost Ranch, a remote dude ranch in the high desert set amidst a dramatic landscape of red and yellow cliffs. Ghost Ranch became O’Keeffe’s centre in New Mexico; she rented a house there during subsequent summers before purchasing the Rancho de los Burros in 1940, creating a home and studio on the property.
The extraordinary terrain around Ghost Ranch became a major subject of O’Keeffe’s art over the following years. Her paintings depict the weathered rock formations surrounding the property and vast vistas of the looming flat-topped mountain, Cerro Pedernal, as well as visionary works featuring over-scaled flowers, bones, and skulls, which she collected from the desert ground.
With no works by O’Keeffe in UK public collections, opportunities to see her paintings in this country are rare. The exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery will feature major loans from US institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, as well as an outstanding group of works from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a display in the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery, Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘Life’ at Ghost Ranch, which will present around 20 photographs of O’Keeffe at her New Mexico home, drawn from photoshoots commissioned by Life Magazine from the famed photographers Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) and John Loengard (1934-2020) in 1948 and 1966, respectively. Featuring previously unpublished photographs and rare colour images, the display will give visitors an added sense of the extraordinary, vast landscapes around Ghost Ranch and of O’Keeffe’s life there, while offering insights into how her image was presented and marketed.
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