Summer Art Party

On Friday, July 15, 2022 the Newport Art Museum will host its annual summer fundraiser, the Summer Art Party, a tradition that dates back to 1927. One of the most highly anticipated and lively cultural events of Newport’s summer season, the Art Museum’s festive dinner dance attracts cultural and civic leaders, artists, collectors, philanthropists, and other art-world notables from across the country. The evening will celebrate the Museum’s exceptional history and officially open the summer exhibition “Georgia

O’Keeffe: Things I Had No Words For.” Work by the celebrated American Modernist, who lived and worked in Santa Fe and Taos, was first exhibited at the Museum in 1938, and the Museum is proud to bring her work back to Newport. All proceeds from the Summer Art Party are in support of the Art Museum’s extensive exhibition program. 

Summer Art Party 2022 co-chair Ellen Bowman, Elizabeth Brooks, Kimberly Cummins, Patrick Dolat, Fran Slutsky, and Ellie Voorhes have planned a festive, Sante Fe-inspired evening as a nod to the time O’Keeffe spent living and working in New Mexico. Southwestern fare and cocktails prepared by Blackstone Caterers will be served, and Jill Rizzo of Studio Choo East will design the event’s artful floral decorations. The dance floor will be back this year and DJ Meghan Taylor from Chicago will be mixing the music.

A live auction will feature one-of-a-kind travel and culinary experiences. Auctioneer John Hays, Deputy Chairman of Christie’s, will be in charge of the live auction followed by a paddle raise, which will support the Art Museum’s dynamic exhibition program.

The Museum is grateful to its generous Summer Art Party supporters: Joan and Richard Abrams, Reenie and Robert Barrow, David and Ellie Voorhes, DiSanto Priest Charitable Foundation, The Gewirz Family, Newport Lamp & Shade Company, Turner C. Scott, Barbara and Larry Schoenfeld, Karl and Teryn Weintz and in-kind sponsor Mancini Beverage.

More information, as well as the opportunity to purchase tickets and tables, are available at https://newportartmuseum.org/events/summer-art-party/ 

About the Exhibition

“Georgia O’Keeffe: Things I Had No Words For,” curated by the Newport Art Museum’s Senior Curator, Dr. Francine Weiss, will be open for public viewing from July 16 through October 16, 2022. Georgia O’Keeffe is hailed for her representational paintings of colorful flowers and southwestern landscapes. Yet O’Keeffe made many strong and vibrant abstract works throughout her career. In the past decade, scholars and curators alike have devoted more attention to O’Keeffe’s use of abstraction, which the artist herself proclaimed was her visual vocabulary for ineffable emotions and sensations.  

O’Keeffe’s enduring interest in abstraction dates back to the beginning of her career when, influenced by the teachings of Arthur Wesley Dow, she created a series of abstract charcoal drawings. Emotive and biomorphic, these early abstractions brought her into the orbit of her future husband Alfred Stieglitz when her friend, Anita Pollitzer, showed them to the gallery owner in 1915. These “things she had no words for” originated from a place of dreams and memories that she often felt came nearer to reality than her representational work. 

Featuring oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors, this exhibition celebrates O’Keeffe’s exploration of abstraction, which established her as one of the foundational American modernists. Powerful, bold, colorful, and evocative, O’Keeffe’s abstractions represent her unique style and approach to nature and landscape.

This exhibition marks the second show of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work at the Newport Art Museum. O’Keeffe first exhibited her work, with other American modern artists, in 1938 and alongside an exhibition of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s sculpture. The Museum is especially thrilled to show O’Keeffe’s work again after so many years.