Conservator Dale Kronkright revealed hidden drawings beneath Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘Untitled (City Night)’ in Los Alamos talk

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Dale Kronkright, head of conservation at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, spoke in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on Wednesday 19 August 2026 about two earlier compositional drawings he found beneath the painted surface of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Untitled (City Night)”. The talk was presented by the Bradbury Science Museum Association in its Night with a Nerd series. Registration has since closed, and the association’s listing recorded 24 registrants.

The association billed the evening as “Peaking Beneath the Paint: Using multi-band imaging to discover Georgia O’Keeffe’s evolving creative process for the 1970’s oil on canvas, Untitled (City Night)” — its own spelling of the title. It was held at Fuller Lodge from 6 to 8pm MDT, with doors at 6 and the talk beginning at 6.30. Admission was $10, free for BSMA members.

“Untitled (City Night)” is an oil on canvas of the 1970s measuring 84 1/16 by 48 1/16 inches, in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum as a gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, accession number 2006.5.542, catalogue raisonné number 1689. Three compositions are present on the large canvas, and the association said their evolution reflects the recurring role of memory in O’Keeffe’s creative process and her life-long interest in the compositional relationships between primary and secondary forms, and between positive and negative spaces. Kronkright’s presentation ran 40 minutes, with time afterwards for questions and discussion.

Kronkright has been head of conservation at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum since its founding in 1997. He began researching O’Keeffe’s studio materials and techniques in 2000 with scientists and conservators at the National Gallery of Art, work that led to the 2006 exhibition and catalogue “Color and Conservation”, documenting the 40-year friendship between the New York conservator Caroline Keck and O’Keeffe. His most recent research on those materials and methods was published in 2021, in an essay for the catalogue of the 2020 Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. Before joining the O’Keeffe Museum he was senior conservator at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe for seven years and at the Regional Conservation Center of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu for six. His current research covers micro-climate framing systems and, with engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Polytec and White Noise, methods of preventing vibration-induced damage to works of art in transit.