Museum of New Mexico Media Center Press Release

Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz’ Letters

New Mexico Museum of Art

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 19, 2011

MEDIA CONTACT

 

Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz personal letters will be the subject of Sarah Greenough's talk on Wednesday, August 3, 6 pm at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Greenough is the Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and author of thelong-awaited book; My Faraway One: The Letters of Georgia OKeeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume 1, 1915-1933. Free admission.

Sarah Greenough applies her formidable scholarship and insights to the engaging epistolary tale of one of the twentieth-century art world’s most famous couples. In more than 650 letters, selected and annotated by Greenough from thousands of pages, the two artists write candidly about topics including art, music, travels, friendships, and their powerful attraction to one another. This volume begins with the letters O’Keeffe and Stieglitz exchanged before they met, details through their passionate affair and marriage, and closes in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 1934, when Stieglitz was seventy years of age. In her lecture, Greenough will talk about tackling the voluminous correspondence of these two creative powerhouses and how their writings illuminate their works of art. Copies of the book are available for purchase in the museum shop. Sarah Greenough is the Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art.

Greenough, who received her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of New Mexico, is senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Her interest in Stieglitz’s work dates back to her student years, which culminated in her dissertation, Alfred Stieglitz’s Photographs of Clouds. Greenough went on to organize several exhibitions on Stieglitz at the National Gallery of Art (Alfred Stieglitz, 1983; Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, 2001) and is the author of the indispensible reference volumes Alfred Stieglitz:The Key Set (2002), for which she was awarded the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award. As a steward of a major holding of Stieglitz’s work at the National Gallery, Greenough also worked closely with Georgia O’Keeffe, who was deeply involved with the care and dissemination of Stieglitz’s art.

In addition to her renown as a Stieglitz scholar, Greenough is known for her 1989 exhibition On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography (1989). She has organized exhibitions and written books about photographers including Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Allen Ginsberg, André Kertész, and Irving Penn. She was also a major contributor to The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson (2007 and All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860 (2004).

For a short biography about her career: http://www.nga.gov/press/bios/greenough.shtm For publishing information about the book: Yale Univeristy Press - http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300166309

 

Media Contacts

Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography

505-476-5088

kate.ware@state.nm.us

 

Steve Cantrell, PR Manager

505-476-1144

steve.cantrell@state.nm.us

 

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