Exhibition Review, Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern: Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY March 3-July 23, 2017

In a sense, the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition ‘Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern’ is a new way of telling an old story. Most are aware of the beloved artist’s longtime marriage to and collaborations with Alfred Stieglitz whose 330 portraits of O’Keeffe have done much to cement both her public image and her artistic reputation. Likewise, O’Keeffe’s discovery of the American southwest and the impact it had on her artistic practice is the stuff of legend. However, when placed in dialogue with the artist’s wardrobe—just as curator Wanda M. Corn has done in ‘Living Modern’—these familiar paintings and photographs have a new resonance. Indeed, through the inclusion of O’Keeffe’s vast and immaculately-conserved wardrobe of austere suits, bespoke wrap dresses and lived-in Levi’s 501s, what would have otherwise essentially been a survey of O’Keeffe’s eighty-year career told through paintings and photographs became an intimate, refreshing and revealing meditation on artistry, identity and self-fashioning—one which will undoubtedly have ramifications in the sphere of art and fashion curating beyond this singular exploration.