One of the most popular art museums in the southwest has announced plans to build a 54,000 square foot expansion of its facility.
Officials with the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe have earlier indicated that the project will allow the museum to put all in one place a collection of more than 3,000 works of art.
As planned, the expansion, which is expected to cost upwards of $60 million, will see the construction of a large gallery space, classroom, and lecture hall.
The gallery space will be used for both permanent and temporary exhibitions.
Although the museum is located at 217 Johnson Street, the expansion will be built at the site of a one-time Safeway grocery store at 123 Grant Avenue, opened during World War II, roughly two blocks to the east.
That building later housed a Furr’s Supermarket, which closed in 1992. The structure is currently occupied by the museum’s Education Center Annex.
It is expected that work on the facility will begin in either late 2022 or early 2023, with a design for the project completed sometime next year.
Regarded as the “mother of American modernism,” O’Keefe, who passed away in 1986, was internationally known for her New Mexico landscapes, among other subject areas.
Beginning in the late 1920s, O’Keefe frequently visited the Land of Enchantment, before permanently moving to the state two decades later.
The Georgia O’Keefe Museum opened in 1997. The O’Keefe facilities in Santa Fe includes a research center in the historic Otero-Bergere House at 135 Grant Avenue, which was built in the early 1870s.
By Garry Boulard
