Take Note: Community Creative Sketchbook Project

Our institution, the museum field, and our world at large are undergoing a period of intense reflection, along with a reassessment, and transformation of our systems for serving, caring for, and connecting with one another. At NOMA, we’d like to invite you to embark on this journey with us.

To “take note” is to notice; to give particular care or attention to. Take Note is a community creative sketchbook project that encourages each of us to dedicate time to a creative process and self-reflection. Weekly prompts challenge us to look again, remember, notice, or reflect through the medium(s) of our choosing: writing, drawing, mixed media, dance, or spoken word, to name a few. Take another look at yourself, your stories, and your surroundings—independently, together!

- - People of all ages and experience levels are encouraged to participate
  - Keep an eye out for a new prompt each week in the NOMA newsletter and on our website
  - Share your creations, reflections, or musings with us by tagging us on Instagram at @neworleansmuseumofart, or email takenote@noma.org to contribute to our online gallery

Berenice Abbott (American 1898-1991), Pennsylvania Station, 1936, Gelatin silver print. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Esterow, 2000.576

THIS WEEK’S PROMPT: What will you build for the future?

Berenice Abbott was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th century cultural figures, photographs of architecture and urban design in 1930s-era New York, and science interpretation in the 1940s to 1960s. This photograph of New York’s Pennsylvania Station captures the soaring web of ironwork that supported the terminal’s central atrium, completed in 1910. At the time Abbott took this photograph, more than 100 million passengers traveled through “Penn Station.” Destruction of the station in 1963, prompted by a rapid decline in cross-country rail travel and demands for the air rights above the landmark, was controversial and caused international outrage among historic preservationists.

Maynard Walker (American, active 20th century), North Polar Stars, c. 1930, Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase, Zemurray Foundation, 75.305

PROMPT: Who are you today? Who will you be tomorrow?

If this photograph reminds you of achieving warp speed (or ludicrous speed) in a science fiction movie, you are not far from the truth. Walker made this picture by aiming his camera up at the night sky and opening the lens for a long exposure. As the Earth moved under the sky, each star left a trail of light on the negative. This is a photograph shows us the universe, but also of the passage of time itself.

Lola Alverez Bravo (Mexican, 1907–1993), El Rapto (The Rapture), Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase, General Acquisition Fund, 82.62

PROMPT: Capture something you’ve outgrown.⁠

Among Lola Alvarez Bravo’s many photographic interests, her most sustained focus might have been the everyday lives of the people of Mexico City, including even the youngest of her neighbors. Her handheld Graflex camera enabled her to work quickly and without the obtrusiveness of a tripod and viewing hood that a large-format camera required. She excelled at composition and her use of light and shadow to create contrast. Vivid pictures like this one reflect her interest in the lives of the people around her, at work and at play.

Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879-1973), Rodin, Le Penseur, 1902, printed later, pigment print. Gift of Jim and Cherye Pierce, 2015.76

PROMPT: Capture something you’ve forgotten.⁠

When Edward Steichen first travelled to Paris in 1901, he was only 22 and Auguste Rodin, 61, was on of the most recognized living artists. Steichen spent a year visiting the sculptor’s studio before he dared attempt a portrait photograph. He finally settles on photographing Rodin with his marble Monument to Victor Hugo and his bronze, The Thinker. ⁠

Birney Imes (American, b. 1951), Untitled, July 1991 from the Whispering Pines Series, 1991, Chromogenic dye coupler print, Gift of Bruce Berman, 2018.67.3

PROMPT: Collect items that represent a week in your life. Create an entry with or inspired by these items.⁠

Birney Imes first visited the Whisperings Pines restaurant in Crawford, Mississippi, in the mid-1970s. Owner Blume Triplett had begun to make the interior of the restaurant a shrine to his late wife by collecting ephemera related to their life together. Imes sought to capture the spirit of the place by photographing Triplett’s arrangements he found them which serve as a kind of landscape of memory made up of thousands of individual objects.⁠
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Gordon Parks, Untitled, Miami, Florida, 1966, printed later, Gelatin silver print, Gift of the Gordon Parks Foundation, 2018.36

PROMPT: Consider the communities you are a part of. What do you give and receive from each of them?⁠

While on assignment for LIFE magazine in 1966, Gordon Parks photographed his friend, prizefighter Muhammad Ali, in a group prayer while training in Miami. In its subject, this moving portrait illustrates but one of the ways we give shape to a place. Parks’s photographs also ask us to consider how his access to Ali made this image possible and how the circulation of this photograph in a national magazine influenced popular understanding of this boxer and humanitarian.

Elliott Erwitt (American, b. France, 1928), New York City, 1946, printed later, Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase through the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 75.76.1

PROMPT: Capture the story of your longest or deepest friendship⁠.

Elliott Erwitt is a French-born American advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid photos of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings. Erwitt served as a photographer’s assistant in the 1950s in the United States Army while stationed in France and Germany. He was influenced by meeting the famous photographers Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker. One of the subjects Erwitt has frequently photographed in his career is dogs: they have been the subject of five of his books.

Art Shay (American, 1922-2018), Hula Hoop Fun for the Whole Family, c. 1960, printed later, Gelatin silver print, Gift of Stephen Daiter Gallery, 2012.44

PROMPT: Create a web representing the people who surround you (by proximity, emotional closeness…you choose).

Art Shay’s photographs appeared in numerous national publications, like LIFE and Sports Illustrated, over the course of the twentieth century. In this image, which includes some of Shay’s own family members, Shay captured a new fad that was taking the country by storm and providing a moment of bonding in his Chicago neighborhood: hula hooping.

Ernst Haas (American, born Austria, 1921-1986), Surtsey Volcano, Near Iceland, 1965, Dye transfer print, Gift of Joshua Mann Pailet in memory of Stephanie Michelle Allen, young, stormy, creative, fashionable, committed to the underdog, driven, haunted by her past, and unable to persevere. To all who consider suicide as a viable alternative-it isn’t. Live, live, live, until the end., 97.877. © Ernst Haas Estate
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PROMPT: What is your origin story? Exchange origin stories with someone in. your life.

A pioneer in color photography, Ernst Haas produced pictures of the natural world around the globe that ambitiously and visually outlined the planet’s origins, like this photograph of lava. These pictures were published in his book The Creation (1971), which went on to be one of the bestselling photography books of all time.

André Kertész (Hungarian, ), Slivinsky Reading, c. 1926. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, Women’s Volunteer Committee Fund, 73.182

PROMPT: Where have you spent the most time lately? Draw this space from memory.

Although André Kertész made this portrait in Jean Slivinsky’s gallery, Au Sacre du Printemps, the tight angle makes the space feel like an intimate corner of a private home, much like the spaces we have all carved out to work, study, teach, and survive the past several months.

Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), Beasts at the Bottom of the Sea [Bêtes au fond de la mer], c. 1900-1905, Pastel on paper, 24 x 19 3/4 in., Gift of Muriel Bultman Francis, 83.69

PROMPT: What depletes, infuriates, or discourages you? What sustains, nourishes, or energizes you?

Odilon Redon (who was born in France, but conceived in New Orleans) is today considered a precursor to the Surrealist movement because of wonderful, dream-world-like compositions such as this pastel. As with dreams, Redon’s drawings can be both alluring and threatening, sources of discontent as well as rejuvenation.