Mornings with O’Keeffe | Georgia O’Keeffe at the Art Students League

Hear from Linda M. Grasso as she discusses Georgia O’Keeffe’s first year in New York City as a student attending the Art Students League, living in a women’s boarding house, and establishing friendships with other women artists. Encountering a gendered and racially segregated city, O’Keeffe and her peers were subject to expectations about codes of conduct, sexual harassment from fellow students, and restrictions on the kinds of careers to which they could aspire. Nevertheless, O’Keeffe and her friends explored the city, delighted in each other’s company, and helped one another become professionals.

—

This talk was recorded as part of our free ‘Mornings With O’Keeffe’ lecture series on the first Wednesday of every month.

About the Speaker

Linda M. Grasso is the author of Equal Under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press), the first historical study of the artist’s complex involvement with, and influence on, US feminism from the 1910s to the 1970s. Her most recent article about O’Keeffe is included in 150 Stories (2025), an anthology published by the Art Students League of New York to commemorate their 150th anniversary. Linda is a professor of English at York College and of Liberal Studies, Biography and Memoir, and Women’s and Gender Studies at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Studies from Brown University.