In 1981, following an invitation to teach at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, she moved permanently to New York City, wanting to be closer to the artists and art that she liked.

[13][14] In the late 1960s through the 1970s, she abandoned painting, and focused on working in graphite pencil,[15] creating highly detailed photorealistic drawings, based on photographs of natural elements such as the ocean's or Moon's surface, the insides of shells, and closeups of rocks.

[16] Critics frequently compare her laborious approach to contemporaries Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter,[17] and she has cited Giorgio Morandi, a master of the pale grey still life, as a major influence.

[19] By 1981, she returned to painting, from this point forward working also with woodcuts and printing, and substantially in charcoal with a wide variety of erasers - often exploring negative space, selectively removing darkness from images,[13] and achieving subtle control of grey tones.

[20] By 2000, she had begun to produce haunting and distinctive spider webs, again negative images in oil or charcoal, to much critical acclaim,[21][22] with particular note of her meticulous surface development and luminosity.

[25][26][27] From 2008, Celmins returned to objects and representative work, with paintings of maps and books, as well as many uses of small graphite tablets - hand held black boards.

[1] In 2020, the major career survey Vija Celmins, was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York and exhibited at the institution's former space MET Brauer.

[33] In 2022, the Hammer Museum at University of California, Los Angeles, organized the exhibition Joan Didion: What She Means, curated by The New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als.

The show traveled to the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2023, and works by Vija Celmins were included alongside artworks by 50 other contemporary artists such as Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, Betye Saar, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, among others.

[35][36] In 2005, a major collector of her work, real estate developer Edward R. Broida, donated 17 pieces, covering 40 years of her career, to the Museum of Modern Art, as part of an overall contribution valued at $50 million ($50,000,000).