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Madison Metropolitan School District

About Us

Welcome to O’Keeffe Middle School!

O’Keeffe serves a diverse school community of learners. The school staff is committed to engaging all students and establishing consistency in curriculum and behavior through relationship building and communication. The school is an active community member and partner, joining with other groups and organizations that assist students in their transitions from childhood to adulthood. O’Keeffe Middle School features a rigorous curriculum offered in a safe and orderly school environment.

Our school was opened in 1939 as Marquette Junior High and was renamed in fall 1993 after the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe.  Georgia O’Keeffe was born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on November 15, 1887, the daughter of Ida and Francis O’Keeffe, who were dairy farmers. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908.  She was best known for her paintings of flowers, New York skyscrapers and Western landscapes from her surroundings in New Mexico.  O’Keeffe received the Wisconsin Governor’s Award for Creativity in the Arts from Governor Warren Knowles in 1966 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 from President Gerald R. Ford.  She died in 1986 in New Mexico.  Did you know that her 1946 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was the first retrospective that MOMA had held for a female artist?

School Mission Statement

The middle school is designed for pupils who are making the transition from childhood to adolescence, from elementary to high school. This period of transition is one of emotional stresses with a wide variation among pupils in social, intellectual, and physical development. As a transitional school, the middle school is designed to meet the unique developmental needs and special interests of this age group.

Teacher and students in the hallway of the school