The exhibition is a departure from the Georgia O’Keeffe that most are familiar with, swaying from her animal skulls and popular erotically-charged florals. “O’Keeffe always rejected such readings, but with little success until she stopped painting flowers and turned to other subjects,” says Lisa Small, the exhibition’s coordinator and curator of European painting and sculpture at the museum. It shows a side of O’Keeffe, who died in 1986 at age 98, that involves abstract paintings, intricately designed clothes, and being a muse to other artists, including her husband Alfred Stieglitz.

Wanda Corn, the exhibition’s curator, had been exploring the way a number of artists used dress as a mode of self-expression. When she learned that O’Keeffe had left a number of garments behind, Corn just had to get a look, and upon seeing them in 2005, she just knew she had to write a book and create an exhibition that included O’Keeffe’s wardrobe.

“The Georgia O’Keeffe she discovered from this work, was an artist not only in her studio but also in her homemaking and self-fashioning,” explains Small. “She purposely and creatively used her clothes to build an identity. She modeled for over 40 photographers and dressed for her portraits in her very simple and distinctive style that featured only black and white.”

O’Keeffe as muse is another constant theme in the exhibition, from a 1908 portrait of O’Keeffe by Eugene E. Speicher, to a painting by Hilda Belcher of the artist in a checkered dress. She was a favorite subject among photographers; the exhibition shows several photos of the artist by Cecil Beaton for Vogue, a solemn portrait of the artist from the back by Richard Avedon, numerous images of O’Keeffe’s New Mexico home by Annie Leibovitz, and a 1980 Polaroid of O’Keeffe by Andy Warhol.

“Unlike most of her male contemporaries, O’Keeffe’s reputation was molded not only by her paintings, but by the fact that she was continuously photographed and images of her ran in newspapers and magazines on a fairly regular basis,” says Small.

Although O’Keeffe paved the way for generations of female artists that followed, she did not identify herself as one. “She did not use the term, but like feminists, she took charge of all aspects of her life,” says Small. “She was always very independent and listened to her own drummer. She resisted being gendered as a person and especially as an artist. She sought equality with men in the art world. Young feminists in the 1970s celebrated her for breaking through the glass ceiling in the arts.”