For about forty years, a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe sat in a wooden box behind a row of coats in an East Village apartment. Starting Saturday, November 7, it hangs in public again: Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, a 1930 landscape, is part of a free exhibition at Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Center, through Tuesday, November 17, the night it goes up for auction.

Christie's announced the rediscovery on November 5. It estimates the painting in the region of $3 million, and it will be offered in the auction house's 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on November 17.

How it turned up

Earlier this year, the painting's owner, a longtime East Village resident, asked her niece to help her sort her belongings and put her affairs in order. Partway through, according to Christie's, she mentioned that there was an O'Keeffe in the front closet.

The niece went looking. Behind dozens of coats she found an old wooden box, and inside it the painting, 10 by 24 inches, with the artist's OK signature on its original backboard. It was still in the packing it had left the gallery in.

The family has asked not to be named. Christie's describes the owner as a Foreign Service veteran who spoke at least four languages, held several advanced degrees and was a world-ranked bridge player. She died shortly after telling her niece about the painting. The niece emailed photographs to Christie's, and its specialists took it from there.

Where it had been

The painting came to the East Village as a graduation present. The owner's mother bought it for $3,800 on April 15, 1963, at The Downtown Gallery on 51st Street, which was O'Keeffe's dealer in Manhattan, and gave it to her daughter when she finished her master's degree.

It hung in her apartment until the mid-1980s. Then, the family told Christie's, she grew uneasy that a guest at one of her bridge games was paying it too much attention, so she packed it back into its original box and put it in the closet. Nobody else in the family knew it was there.

Scholars knew it existed only from a photograph taken in 1931. It appears in an appendix of the O'Keeffe catalog raisonné, the scholarly record of all her known works, but its whereabouts were unknown for decades, and Christie's says it has not been seen publicly in at least thirty years.

The painting

O'Keeffe painted it in 1930, the year after her first visit to northern New Mexico, the landscape she returned to for the rest of her career. It shows Lobo Peak, north of Taos Pueblo, in bands of earth tones and thick paint, and Christie's believes it is the first of three versions she made of that view.

New Yorkers can see a sibling without a ticket to anything: the second version is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The third is in a private collection and once belonged to David and Peggy Rockefeller.

Seeing it

The exhibition is free and open to the public, and it covers every work in Christie's November Marquee Week sales, including pieces from the collections of Clive Davis, Herbert Lust and Antonio Homem Sonnabend. Check Christie's site for daily viewing hours before you go.

Christie's is at 20 Rockefeller Center, on West 49th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The B, D, F and M trains stop at 47-50 Streets-Rockefeller Center, a short walk away.

The details

  • What: Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I (1930), by Georgia O'Keeffe, on public view
  • When: Saturday, November 7, through Tuesday, November 17, 2026
  • Where: Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Center
  • Cost: Free
  • Auction: 20th Century Evening Sale, November 17, estimate in the region of $3 million

Sources