During her lifetime Georgia O'Keeffe created a body of work whose esthetic is modern in its precision, clean lines, and elegant simplicity. She applied this esthetic to the display and reproduction of her work and for representing and promoting herself. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum follows this esthetic as a means of fulfilling aspects of its mission: perpetuating the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe.

The Museum displays O'Keeffe's work according to her preferences as are evident in photographs of the many exhibitions she installed at galleries and museums. She preferred reductive, simple, elegant spaces whose walls were white or pearl grey, minimal signage and no wall text, and elegant and non-intrusive frames for her work.

She lived this esthetic as can be seen in her manner of dress and in how she furnished her Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch houses, which remain today as they were when she died in 1986.

O'Keeffe rarely allowed the reproduction of her work for three-dimensional, commercial purposes, but was generous in allowing its reproduction in scholarly books and exhibitions. Permission was often granted if the image was assigned the proper copyright, surrounded by a white border of appropriate size, not cropped or altered in any way, bled to the edges, or printed over with text. Additionally, O'Keeffe specified that all reproductions be consistent with her esthetic.