My Life with Georgia O'Keeffe

Written by the premiere Georgia O’Keeffe scholar, My Life with Georgia O’Keeffe gives readers a glimpse into the politically fraught world of O’Keeffe’s estate and the politics at play in art, art history, and the art-authentication process.

Before 1987, art historian Barbara Buhler Lynes specialized in Italian Renaissance art. Then she saw the O’Keeffe retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and everything changed. Astounded by O’Keeffe’s vision and vexed by questions the exhibit and catalogue left unanswered, Lynes began to research O’Keeffe. Her work led to the creation of the universal authentication tool for O’Keeffe’s work, the two-volume, 1,198-page Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, published in 1999. That same year, Lynes and her husband moved to Santa Fe, where she became the founding curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Part memoir, part history, My Life with Georgia O’Keeffe explores Lynes’s journey to becoming the expert on one of the world’s most recognized artists. Lynes divulges how she successfully navigated the complexities of the O’Keeffe estate, details the meticulous detective work required to identify works by an artist, and showcases the negotiation skills needed to work with museum curators, art collectors, and dealers. Fans of O’Keeffe and anyone interested in the art world will find this book a fascinating dive into how the defining document on O’Keeffe’s oeuvre came to be.