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Explore where Georgia O'Keeffe lived and worked, at her Abiquiú home.
(Photo: Courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum) |
After visiting the most recent developments around town, devote a day to one of the area’s best-known artistic exports: Georgia O’Keeffe. Wake up early and fill up on smoked-trout hash with tomatillo salsa ($16.75) or griddled polenta with sautéed chorizo ($16.75) and a bottomless cup of dark organic roast ($2.75) at downtown mainstay Café Pasqual’s. Start off your day at the well-curated (and manageably sized) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, showcasing a range of the artist’s work alongside that of her contemporaries like Ansel Adams. Then leave the city and drive 50 miles north to Abiquiú, known locally as O’Keeffe Country. Tour O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home ($35; book in advance) for an intimate look into her day-to-day life and the painstaking steps she took to renovate her home with works from Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Girard, and Florence Knoll (sorry, Instagrammers: Cameras and iPhones aren’t allowed). Walk within the walls of her vegetable and herb garden and see where O’Keeffe worked: a modest studio with panoramic views of the Sangre Cristo mountains and Chama River Valley. Afterward, drop by nearby historic Bode's General Store for one of its specialty sandwiches on Santa Fe’s own Sage Bakehouse sourdough, or a squishy-bunned green-chili cheeseburger (both $10). Back in the car, head six miles (carefully follow the driving directions) to the more obscure Plaza Blanca, or “White Place,” for a hike around a set of spectacular bone-white rock formations. Farther down the road, O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch, her high-desert summer home is closed to the public, but guests can arrange a private tour ($29 to $39) of key landscape locations in O’Keeffe paintings, including Pedernal, a flat-topped mountain about which the artist once said, “God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it.” Head back into Santa Fe, and end your day with dinner at the newly opened Georgia Restaurant. Nab a table close to the pixelated black-and-white O’Keeffe photo by New York artist Alex Cao, and order the local Talus Wind Ranch Lamb Rack ($35), or sit on the front patio with a cocktail like the A. Stieglitz, a dry gin martini served with onions ($12)—and named for the famed American photographer who was also O’Keeffe’s husband.