Breaking Bad

30. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Albuquerque, NM

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In Season 3, with an ever-keen eye for symbolism, Vince Gilligan included a flashback scene where Jesse and Jane peruse the halls of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. As they stand in front of the painting “My Last Door” an unimpressed Jesse offers his interpretation of the piece stating that it is a futile attempt to achieve perfection. The artist Jane sees it as O’Keeffe’s way of making a good thing last. The scene ends with Jane subbing her smoke out with a fleeting glimpse of her pink lipstick on the cigarette. Georgia O’Keeffe is considered the mother of American modernism and is one of the most well known artists in the world. She made her permanent home in New Mexico in 1949 after working and living there part time for twenty years. The museum is the largest repository of O’Keeffe’s works in the world with over 3,000 paintings, drawings, and sculptures that date from 1901 to 1984. Visitors can see a rotating selection of these works throughout the year. While the museum presents special exhibitions of O’Keeffe’s work, it also features works of her modernist contemporaries as well as living artists. Other artists of note who have had exhibitions at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum are Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Arthur Dove, and Sherrie Levine who are among 140 artists other than O’Keeffe to have been featured at the museum. In a bit of Breaking Bad trivia, O’Keefe’s home in New Mexico was called Ghost Ranch, which sits just north of the tiny town of Abiquiu. Abiquiu is what Vince Gilligan named the episode in which we see Jesse and Jane in the flashback. The landscape around Abiquiu is dramatic and was no doubt a big allure for O’Keeffe but also filmmakers. Numerous films including Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull, Cowboys and Aliens, City Slickers, Red Dawn, and Wyatt Earp were filmed near Abiquiu. Photo Credit: adobeairstream.com, travel.usnews.com