{{short description|Native American arts advocate}} {{Infobox person | name = Maria Chabot | birth_name = Mary Lee Chabot | image = File:Maria_Chabot_and_Skull.png | caption = Maria Chabot and Skull, 1944 | birth_date = September 19, 1913 | birth_place = San Antonio, Texas | death_date = July 9, 2001 (age 87) | death_place = Albuquerque, New Mexico | occupation = Indigenous peoples rights activist, writer | partner = Dorothy Stewart (1933–1939) | spouse = Dana K. Bailey (married in 1961 for six months) }} '''[https://www.zibbywilder.com/blog Maria Chabot]''' (September 19, 1913 – July 9, 2001) was a writer, an advocate for Native American arts, a rancher, and a friend of Georgia O'Keeffe. She led the restoration, design, and building of O'Keeffe's home and studio in Abiquiú, New Mexico. She was also a gifted photographer, and took many famous photographs of the artist and her life. These include photos of camping trips to the Black Place and the photograph of O'Keeffe entitled ''Women Who Rode Away,'' which shows the artist sitting on the back of a motorcycle driven by Maurice Grosser.<ref name="NYT obit">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/us/maria-chabot-87-dies-began-indian-market-and-was-an-o-keeffe-associate.html |title=Maria Chabot, 87, Dies; Began Indian Market and Was an O'Keeffe Associate | author=Douglas Martin |date=July 15, 2001 |website=The New York Times |access-date=January 27, 2017}}</ref> Some correspondence related to the building of the Abiquiu house was published in the book ''Maria Chabot—Georgia O'Keeffe: Correspondence 1941–1949''.
Chabot was instrumental in establishing the modern Santa Fe Indian Market. She worked for the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs and the federal Office of Indian Affairs documenting Native American arts and crafts. Chabot has been described as "a photographer, writer, and explorer".<ref name="Ortega">{{Cite magazine |last=Ortega |first=Ethan |date=Fall 2019 |title=Spinster Acts |url=https://www.elpalacio.org/2019/09/spinster-acts/ |magazine=El Palacio |access-date=2022-12-17}}</ref>
== Early life == Mary Lee "Maria" Chabot was born on September 19, 1913, in San Antonio, Texas,<ref name="Guide">{{Cite web|last=Duggan|first=Tori|title=Library Guide: Maria Chabot: Biography|url=https://okeeffemuseum.libguides.com/guides/chabot/biography|access-date=2021-03-31|website=okeeffemuseum.libguides.com|language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=17}} the daughter of Charles Jasper Chabot, a capitalist, and his third wife Olive Anderson Johnston.{{efn|Her paternal grandfather, Charles Stooks Chabot, was a British consular agent<ref name="Guide" /> or foreign service agent to Mexico. Upon leaving Mexico, he and his wife Mary Van Derlip Chabot moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he was a commission agent and she was a Spanish colonial art collector and an artist.<ref name="Williams">{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Docia Shultz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yDABdPDXLwcC&pg=PA46 |title=When Darkness Falls: Tales of San Antonio Ghosts and Hauntings |date=1997 |publisher=Taylor Trade Publications |isbn=978-1-55622-536-9 |pages=46–47 |language=en}}</ref> Maria's father was born in Mexico.<ref>{{citation | title=Maria Chabot, San Antonio, Texas | work=United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930 | location= Washington, D.C. | publisher=National Archives and Records Administration }}</ref>}} Maria Chabot had three half-siblings who reached adulthood from her parents' previous marriages: Frederick Charles Chabot, Edith Lilian Chabot, and James Kennedy Johnston (the son from Olive's first marriage.){{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=17}}{{efn|Frederick was the son of Charles and his first wife, Pauline Wachter Chabot, who died during childbirth. Edith Lilian Chabot was the daughter of Charles and his second wife, Lucille Branch Hugo Chabot. Charles Hugo Chabot was also a child from the second marriage. He and Lucille died in 1907 in a drowning accident. James Kennedy Johnston was the son of Olive and her first husband, James Kennedy Johnston.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=17}}}}
Chabot developed an interest in writing as a girl. After graduating early from Brackenridge high school, Chabot took a job as copywriter at a San Antonio department store and also wrote short stories.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|pp=17–18}} She continued to write fiction into the 1960s, but the short stories and novels were never published.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|pp=14, 17}}
She traveled in 1933 to Mexico City to pursue her interests in literature and art<ref name="Ortega" /> and to visit a relative, Emily Edwards, who lived there at the time.<ref name="Guide" />{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=17}} There she met artist Dorothy Stewart.
== Dorothy Stewart == After Chabot and Stewart met, they began a romantic relationship.<ref name="Ortega" /> They traveled together extensively during the 1930s in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Through Stewart, Chabot met many influential progressive people, including benefactor Mary Cabot Wheelwright, archaeologist Jesse L. Nusbaum, and Native American pottery expert Kenneth M. Chapman.<ref name="Ortega" />{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=19}} Grace Guest, assistant curator of Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., became her friend.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=19}} Although their romantic relationship ended in 1939,<ref name="Ortega" /> the women remained close friends until Stewart's death in 1955.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=18}}
== Career == === Advocate for Native Americans === In 1934, Chabot went with Stewart to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she gained employment with the New Mexico Department of Vocational Education. She worked at the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board in 1935.<ref name="Guide" /> With these agencies and as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) initiative, she photographed and documented Spanish Colonial and Native American arts and crafts in the Southwest<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="Guide" /> and territorial architecture in New Mexico.<ref name="Markesteyn">{{Cite magazine |last1=Markesteyn |first1=Marie |last2=Walsh |first2=Candace |date=Fall 2017 |title=The Accidental Angel |url=https://www.elpalacio.org/2017/09/the-accidental-angel/ |magazine=El Palacio |access-date=2022-12-17}}</ref> To complete her photographic survey, she traveled throughout the Southwestern United States in the 1930s and 1940s.<ref name="MC to OC" /> She photographed the collection of Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who was a noted collector of Navajo art, now in the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.<ref name="NYT obit" /> In the 1930s, Chabot published articles on Native American arts and crafts<ref name="MC to OC">{{Cite web |title=Maria Chabot to Olive C. Chabot, 1938 April through 1938 July |url=http://archive.okeeffemuseum.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/7112 |access-date=2022-12-16 |website=archive.okeeffemuseum.org}}</ref> for ''New Mexico Magazine'' to inform potential buyers on how to identify valuable works of art.<ref name="EP">{{Cite web |title=To Market, To Market |url=https://www.elpalacio.org/2022/06/to-market-to-market/ |access-date=2022-12-16 |website=El Palacio}}</ref>
[[File:NewMexicoPalaceSantaFe.jpg|thumb|Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico]] Chabot was made the executive secretary of the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs in 1936.<ref name="NYT obit" /> During that time, she came up with the idea for the Santa Fe Indian Market,<ref name="Obit">{{Cite news |date=2001-07-11 |title=Obituary for Maria Chabot |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/114702418/obituary-for-maria-chabot/ |access-date=2022-12-16 |work=The Santa Fe New Mexican |pages=11}}</ref> modeled after the outdoor markets in Mexico, which she established despite initial opposition from local businesses.<ref name="Obit" /> The market held weekly fairs at the Palace of the Governors<ref name="Guide" /> and rented school buses to transport Native Americans to the markets where they could sell their jewelry, pottery, or other wares.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="Obit" /> She visited pueblos and encouraged artists to sell their works, including Maria Martinez, a potter of the San Ildefonso Pueblo. Later she worked at the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board, where she established cooperative marketing organizations on reservations.<ref name="NYT obit" />
=== Rancher === Chabot lived on Mary Cabot Wheelwright's Los Luceros property in Alcalde, New Mexico, after the end of her relationship with Dorothy Stewart.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="Ortega" />{{efn|Casa Grande is the 24-bedroom adobe mansion at Los Luceros. Cabot's residence was located across the road, but whenever Wheelwright was at Los Luceros, she would ask Chabot to stay with her at Casa Grande.<ref name="Markesteyn" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Los Luceros Historic Site |url=https://www.newmexicoculture.org/historic-sites/los-luceros |access-date=2022-12-17 |website=New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs |language=en}}</ref>}} She served as a companion to Wheelwright and ran the cattle ranch, farm, and fruit tree orchard for 20 years,<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="Obit" /> typically working in the fields with the men.<ref name="Markesteyn" /> During that period, she was president of the local irrigation association.<ref name="Obit" /> When Wheelwright died in 1958, Chabot inherited Los Luceros but found it onerous to manage the property; she sold it to Charles and Nina Collier in the early 1960s.<ref name="Miller">{{Cite magazine |last=Miller |first=Michael |date=Fall 2017 |title=The Secret Sanctuary |url=https://www.elpalacio.org/2017/09/the-secret-sanctuary/ |magazine=El Palacio}}</ref>{{efn|Charles Collier helped Georgia O'Keeffe find the hacienda in Abiquiú, New Mexico, that Chabot would restore.<ref name="Miller" />}}
=== Georgia O'Keeffe === In 1940, Chabot met O'Keeffe, with whom she had a friendship that allowed for Chabot to write in a peaceful setting and for O'Keefe to spend part of the year in New York with her husband Alfred Stieglitz while Chabot took care of her property in New Mexico.<ref name="CT">{{cite news|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2004/03/25/the-little-known-woman-in-georgia-okeeffes-life/ |title=The little-known woman in Georgia O'Keeffe's life | author=Michael Kilian |date=March 25, 2004 |website=The Chicago Tribune |access-date=January 27, 2017}}</ref> From 1941 to 1944, Chabot spent the summer and fall of each year at O'Keeffe's house on the Ghost Ranch, where she managed the ranch. During the winter and spring, Chabot returned to San Antonio.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=14}} She camped with O'Keeffe in northern New Mexico and was captured in ''Maria goes to a Party'', one of O'Keeffe's paintings of their trips.<ref name="NYT obit" />
Beginning in 1945,{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=14}} Chabot led the restoration of an adobe hacienda (Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio) in Abiquiú for O'Keeffe, who oversaw the process.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref>{{Cite news |date=2022-06-26 |title=Inside Georgia O'Keeffe's Abiquiu home |pages=A8 |work=Albuquerque Journal |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/114701398/inside-georgia-okeeffes-abiquiu-home/ |access-date=2022-12-16}}</ref> Chabot said of the experience, "I had never found anything as romantic as this beat-up building, a ruin really... It took six months just to get the pigs out of the house."<ref name="NYT obit" />
Chabot and O'Keeffe kept up an extensive correspondence.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=14}} In her later years, Chabot assembled a manuscript containing her correspondence with O'Keeffe and photographs, but she did not complete the project in her lifetime. When she died, the materials were transferred to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center.{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|p=16}} The book ''Maria Chabot—Georgia O'Keeffe: Correspondence 1941–1949'' was published in 2004.<ref name="CT" />{{sfn|O'Keeffe|2003|pp=15–16}}
==Later years and death== In 1961, Chabot married Dana K. Bailey, a radio astronomer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The marriage lasted only six months; Chabot said, "we were much better as friends than as husband and wife." In the 1960s, she sold the ranch that she had inherited from Wheelwright and moved to Albuquerque, where she cared for her elderly mother.<ref name="NYT obit" />
Chabot was named a "Living Treasure" of Santa Fe in 1996. She died on July 9, 2001, at 87 years of age in an Albuquerque hospital.<ref name="NYT obit" />
==Notes== {{Notelist}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== * {{Cite book |last=O'Keeffe |first=Georgia | editor1=Lynes, Barbara Buhler | editor2=Paden, Ann|url=http://archive.org/details/mariachabotgeorg0000okee |title=Maria Chabot—Georgia O'Keeffe: correspondence, 1941–1949 |date=2003 |publisher=Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press; Santa Fe: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum |isbn=978-0-8263-2993-6}}
{{Georgia O'Keeffe}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chabot, Maria}} Category:1913 births Category:2001 deaths Category:Architects from San Antonio Category:People from Rio Arriba County, New Mexico Category:People from Abiquiú, New Mexico Category:LGBTQ people from Texas Category:LGBTQ people from New Mexico Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people