Reframing Georgia O'Keeffe's legacy and protecting the land she loved

This starkly beautiful, high desert of northern New Mexico is where the artist Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted the abstract, color-drenched paintings of flowers, bones and landforms that brought her international acclaim as "the mother of American modernism." In the 40 years since her death, the area came to be called O'Keeffe County. There is a move afoot, prompted by Pueblo Indians and Hispanos who've been on the land for centuries, to stop calling it O'Keeffe Country. He stands on a bluff and scans the storied valley. It's incredible." Ghost Ranch is now a spiritual and educational retreat center just over an hour's drive northwest of Santa Fe. O'Keeffe fell in love with Ghost Ranch country when she first visited from New York in the 1930s. She spent most of the rest of her life painting the raw beauty of her surroundings."There's something in the air, it's just different, the sky is different, the stars are different, the wind is just different," O'Keeffe said in a mid-1970s public television documentary. At 88, the legendary artist, dressed in a black smock, was filmed walking through the eroded sculptural features of the badlands, her face furrowed by age, her eyes still blazing. She died in Santa Fe at the age of 98. That played well among her legions of admirers, but not so much in northern New Mexico among the Tewa, the indigenous people that include the Pueblo Indians. Her favorite subject was Cerro Pedernal, the flat-topped mountain that stands like a sentinel over this basin. In one infamous quote, O'Keeffe said, "It's my private mountain. It belongs to me. He has also painted Pedernal, which Tewa consider a sacred landmark whose native name is Tsi-Pin, flaking stone mountain. "It's pretty funny to hear that, to think that one person can say, 'If I paint this enough I can have it. "But it's just not just hers. You have Tewa people that have lived here on the landscape, as well, since time immemorial." Garcia is co-curator of a groundbreaking exhibition called Tewa Nangeh at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Twelve Tewa artists respond, with their art, to O'Keeffe's aesthetic claim to their ancestral land. "At the O'Keeffe Museum, for so long the story of northern New Mexico has been told only through Georgia O'Keeffe's eyes," says Bess Murphy, co-curator of the exhibition and art curator at the museum. "And really we were hoping to create a space in the museum where we can add complexity to that narrative." The museum's official poster for the exhibition highlights that changing narrative. A sign says, "Welcome to O'Keeffe Country" and "Tewa" has been scrawled across her name. Murphy says the Tewa-and-O'Keeffe show has doubled the number of local and native visitors who visit the museum. A yearly music festival is held at the ranch, called Blossoms and Bones, after her still-lifes. The ranch's classic logo is an O'Keeffe drawing of a cow skull. And just down the road, visitors can sign up for a tour of O'Keeffe's second home and studio in the village of Abiquiú. "O'Keeffe Country is not a frame that we use," says Evans. Minesh Bacrania for NPR hide caption In December, the ranch announced a historic conservation agreement that will protect this pristine emptiness in perpetuity. Funding comes from the state's Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund. "This is truly a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect one of the West's most iconic landscapes," says Hayden. "Acreage-wise it's not the largest. "So it's a tough business model. Minesh Bacrania for NPR hide caption It's also cattle country. Norman Vigil runs 25 black Angus on Ghost Ranch pastureland. On a recent afternoon, he was out checking on his mama cows. "Hey, vacas!" he called in Spanish, shaking a bucket of feed pellets. The conservation plan continues the longstanding arrangement that lets local cattlemen use ranch pastures for winter grazing. "It allows us to maintain our culture, our historical use," Vigil says. A number of local ranchers lease grazing rights from Ghost Ranch. Minesh Bacrania for NPR hide caption He's a bit jaded when it comes to the label "O'Keeffe Country." While it's been good for realtors, Airbnbs, cafes, and gift shops, Vigil says for many folks in the region, like him, all it's done is drive up home prices. "There's a lot of people making a good living because of Georgia O'Keeffe, and so can you argue on the economic side for those folks," he says. "But for us, really the exposure hasn't been all that great." For years, the nonprofit Ghost Ranch has charged film crews to use the stunning panorama as a backdrop. Minesh Bacrania for NPR hide caption Tewa artist Garcia knows why they want to be out here. She's not lying," he says. "The mountains, the clouds, dusk, dawn, midnight. I mean, it's a beautiful place. I wouldn't trade it for anywhere else."