White House O’Keeffe Marks A First For Women

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the acquisition of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting for the permanent White House collection on Friday.

The oil painting, “Bear Lake, New Mexico,” is the first painting by a major 20th-century American woman to be exhibited in the state rooms of the White House.

Clinton unveiled the landscape painting, which depicts a mountain and a glacial lake on Pueblo land in Taos, New Mexico, at an East Room ceremony.

“I hope that as visitors … walk through these halls at the White House and see the O’Keeffe hanging, they too will feel more connected to our past, grateful for our present and more excited about our future,” the first lady said.

O’Keeffe produced the work, which will hang permanently in the Green Room, during an extended stay to New Mexico in 1930. The landscape depicted in the painting is a sacred Pueblo site not accessible to the public.

It remained in O’Keeffe’s personal collection until her death in 1986.