From My Window at An American Place, North

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

“My first memory of Alfred Stieglitz,” recalled the photographer’s wife, the painter Georgia O’Keeffe, “was on a day in 1908 when . . . I went with two or three other students to see the Rodin drawings at ‘291.’ . . . where a new kind of art was shown—and it was the only place in New York you could see anything like it.” O’Keeffe’s reminiscence suggests the influential character of the work Stieglitz promoted, and of his gallery itself. The photographer operated galleries throughout his life, using them as a platform to present his vision of modern art in America; he also treated his last gallery, An American Place, as a site for artistic creativity in its own right. The Art Institute was one of several major museums to receive gifts from Stieglitz’s collection—via O’Keeffe, his executor—in 1949; these donations often marked (as here) the institutions’ first acquisition of photographs as art. For more on the Alfred Stieglitz collection at the Art Institute, along with in-depth object information, please visit the website: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection .

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