Damaged O’Keeffe painting on display again after restoration

The Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A damaged Georgia O’Keeffe painting is back on display after conservators spent 1,250 hours and $145,000 restoring the piece.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s head of conservation called the job the biggest restoration project he has ever worked on. The results will be on display at the museum through Oct. 10. The painting will then travel to the San Diego Museum of Art in 2023.

Conservators had to repair not only water damage but previous restoration work that had failed.

The painting, titled “Spring," combines several of O’Keeffe’s favorite New Mexican subjects. It features an antler and large vertebrae, which are on display with the painting, desert primrose, the flat-topped mountain Cerro Pedernal.