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Description: My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz...
IN 1981 GEORGIA O’ KEEFFE asked me to select and edit letters that she and Alfred Stieglitz had exchanged over the course of their thirty-one-year relationship, with the purpose of publishing this important and revealing correspondence. Thirty years later, with this volume, the first of two, I am honored to have begun to fulfill that request.
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PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00086.008
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Acknowledgments
IN 1981 GEORGIA O’ KEEFFE asked me to select and edit letters that she and Alfred Stieglitz had exchanged over the course of their thirty-one-year relationship, with the purpose of publishing this important and revealing correspondence. Thirty years later, with this volume, the first of two, I am honored to have begun to fulfill that request.
When I began work on this book, I had no idea of the scope of their letters or the complex issues they raised — the tangled web of their chronology; their innumerable references to tantalizing but frequently obscure details; and their occasional illegibility. Nor did I initially comprehend the ways their correspondence demanded an intimate familiarity with not only their art but also the minutia of their daily activities and their relationships with a constantly changing cast of family, friends, and acquaintances. Yet as soon as I delved into the project and heard the compelling voices of the authors, I understood that their letters would allow O’Keeffe and Stieglitz to tell the story of their lives and love in their own rich, resonant words.
I owe my largest debt of gratitude to Miss O’Keeffe herself, not only for the opportunity to work on this engrossing project but also for the confidence she showed in me at a very early stage in my life. I am also indebted to the people she hired, probably in the 1940s and 1950s, who made a preliminary organization of their correspondence and, under her supervision, transcribed many of her letters to Stieglitz. I do not know their names, unfortunately, and so am unable to thank them in person, but the lessons they silently gave me in decoding O’Keeffe’s writing have proved invaluable.
I am also indebted to many scholars of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz who have been unstinting in their assistance and encouragement at all stages of this endeavor. Sue Davidson Lowe, Stieglitz’s grandniece and biographer, shared with me the privileged perspective she gained from the time she spent with both Stieglitz and O’Keeffe as a child and young adult, as well as her extensive knowledge of the large Stieglitz family. She and Barbara Buhler Lynes, author of the indispensible Georgia O’Keeffe: A Catalogue Raisonné, have answered innumerable questions of both great import and, no doubt, seemingly mind-numbing trivia with insight, grace, and patience. Also to be thanked in this regard are Sarah Whitaker Peters, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Judith Mara Gutman, Laurie Lisle, and Richard Whelan for the critical work they have done to illuminate the accomplishments of these two artists and for their assistance with this book. Wanda Corn also offered significant input as I worked to shape the selection of letters and their presentation; I thank her for her time, expertise, and support.
I also wish to acknowledge the important role that my friend and colleague Mary Yakush, former senior editor at the National Gallery of Art, played in this publication. Ever since we worked together on Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters, the 1987 catalogue published by the Gallery, she has encouraged me with her own interest in this project. In 2000 she spent several months reading and transcribing letters, and in 2004–2005 and again in 2007 she worked extensively with me to devise a structure and texts that would enable both authors’ voices to remain paramount while still providing readers with necessary contextual information. I thank her for her assistance and wise counsel.
My colleagues at the National Gallery also deserve special recognition. I especially wish to thank Earl A. Powell, director; Franklin Kelly and Alan Shestack, present and former deputy directors; and Elizabeth Cropper, dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, for their steadfast support and for awarding me the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Curatorial Sabbatical Fellowship in 2004–2005 and Robert Smith Fellowships in 2005, 2006, and 2007. These awards enabled me to take precious time away from my work at the National Gallery to complete necessary research. Judy Metro also deserves special thanks for her unfailingly astute advice and for reading the manuscript at a critical stage of its completion. Curators, conservators, and members of the Gallery’s library have also greatly assisted my work. I would especially like to thank Charles Brock, Ted Dalziel, Mariam Dirda, Ruth Fine, Constance McCabe, Tom McGill, Greg Most, Kimberly Schenck, Wil Scott, and Neal Turtell. Present and former members of the department of photographs, including Emma Acker, Molly Bloom, Sarah Gordon, Sarah Kennel, Mark Levitch, Kathleen McGovern, Sara Cooling Trucksess, Diane Waggoner, and Matthew Witkovsky, are also to be thanked for listening for so many years to the stories of my work on this project with good humor and for performing their own jobs so superbly, which enabled me to devote more time to this book.
I was also fortunate to have the help of many talented people who transcribed letters and completed research. I thank Sarah Benditt, Alice Carver-Kubik, Adam Greenhalgh, Marcie Hocking, Arpad Kovacs, Liliana Milkova, Andrea Nelson, Erin O’Toole, John Palmer, Gabriella Sarraf, John Scribner, Annie Stuart, Terri Weissman, and my daughter Sophia Cikovsky for their assistance. Janet Blyberg and Joel Lefever also deserve special thanks.
Throughout the years, numerous other individuals have helped me bring this book to fruition. I particularly wish to thank Agapita Lopez, former director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, for sharing with me her knowledge of O’Keeffe’s life and her great skill in deciphering the painter’s handwriting; Catherine Krueger and Raymond Krueger, chair of the board of directors of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, for information about Catherine Klenert and the O’Keeffe family; June O’Keeffe Sebring, also on the board of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, for additional insights into the O’Keeffe family; and Sidnye Johnson of the Cornette Library, West Texas A&M University, for invaluable details about O’Keeffe’s colleagues at West Texas State Normal College. I also thank Bill Green and Warren Stricker of the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum; Rob Groman, Kevin Hill, and Gayle Brown of the Amarillo Public Library; Sandra Hanna of the Amarillo District Court House; Joann Holt at the Amarillo Bar Association for helping to make O’Keeffe’s years in Canyon, Texas, come alive; and Anne Stewart for sharing her knowledge of Leah Harris and O’Keeffe’s time in Waring, Texas. I also wish to acknowledge the kind assistance of William Agee, Doris Bry, Eleanor Caponigro, Mariana Cook, Michelle Delaney, Peggy Edwards, Eugene Gaddis, Jim Goldberg, Laura Harris, Daniel Hartwig, Michelle Harvey, Anne Havinga, Tom Hinson, David Hogue, Beth Jaffe-Davis, Hans Kraus, Nancy Norman Lassalle and Abigail Norman, Joseph Lichtenberg, Peter MacGill, Anthony Montoya, Francis Naumann, Sasha Nicholas, Lesley Poling-Kempes, Jill Quasha, Katy Rawdon, Lois Rudnick, Janet Russek, Betsy Schulberg, Will South, Roger Taylor, Sharyn Udall, and Michael Weil, Jr. And I would be greatly remiss if I did not note the invaluable assistance provided to me by Lawrence Barth and the support of Kevin and Karen Kennedy.
During the past thirty years, I have spent untold hours at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Yet despite my familiarity with both the place and the people, I still consider it a rare privilege every time I visit that remarkable institution. I wish to gratefully acknowledge the former director, Frank Turner, as well as his predecessors, for their support of this project. I am especially indebted to Nancy Kuhl and Patricia Willis, present and former curators of the Yale Collection of American Literature, for their invaluable help and advice. From the security people to archivists to those in charge of access services, the staff has been exceptionally professional, while simultaneously extending me numerous kindnesses that have made my stays more enjoyable and my work more productive. I wish to extend my deepest thanks to all of them, especially Stephen Jones, Sandra Markham, Karen Nagle, and Timothy Young. Librarians at other institutions have also been generous with their time and expertise, among them Amy Rule and Leslie Calmes of the Center for Creative Photography and Eumie Imm-Stroukoff of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center. I also thank the staffs of the Cleveland Museum of Art library; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin; and the Manuscript and Archive Division of the New York Public Library.
The staff of Yale University Press also deserves special recognition. For more than six years, Patricia Fidler has watched this book evolve and has astutely guided it to publication. I thank her for her steadfast enthusiasm, support, and counsel, and for assembling an excellent team, including Sarah Henry, John Palmer, Katherine Boller, Kristin Swan, Michelle Komie, and David Luljak, who have brought the book to fruition with intelligence and grace. I am particularly grateful to Karen Gangel, who has worked so thoroughly and meticulously with me to edit the manuscript and who has approached each issue with good cheer and enthusiasm, and to Heidi Downey, for her gifted oversight of this complicated project. As a special tribute, I wish to thank my friend and colleague Margaret Bauer for her stunning design, especially her inspired jacket, which so eloquently expresses the spirit of the letters.
Finally, I thank my husband, Nicolai Cikovsky, and my daughters, Sophia and Emily, for patiently enduring my absorption in this project and, as always, for their love and support.
Acknowledgments
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