Art and nature in harmony
NOMA is committed to the health and safety of our community. Please see safety guidelines below.
Admission is free. Donations are appreciated.
Open seven days a week
Summer Hours (April–September) 10 am–6 pm | Winter Hours (October–March) 10 am–5 pm
Wheelchairs may be used throughout our barrier-free property and are available upon request.
Image: Elyn Zimmerman’s Mississippi Meanders bridge is illuminated at dusk.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden occupies approximately eleven acres in City Park adjacent to the museum. Atypical of most sculpture gardens, this garden is located within a mature existing landscape of pines, magnolias, and live oaks surrounding two lagoons. The garden design creates outdoor viewing spaces within this picturesque landscape. Originally conceived in 2003, the Sculpture Garden doubled in size in 2019 and has grown to include more than 90 sculptures. READ MORE
Sydney and Walda Besthoff are the namesake visionary founders behind a world-renowned sculpture garden for New Orleans.
LEARN MORE
Architects, landscape architects, lighting designers, and arborists were among the contractors who made it all possible.
LEARN MORE
See highlights of the Sculpture Garden in a virtual tour produced in partnership with the Google Arts & Culture Initiative.
LEARN MORE
You can play a role in the historic expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden by making a gift to support the project.
LEARN MORE
Relive the excitement of the grand opening of the Besthoff Sculpture Garden expansion in May 2019.
WATCH
Bronze
Pablo Casals’s Obelisk, a towering accumulation of welded bronze cellos, dominates the waters of a lagoon in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Standing over twenty feet tall, the Obelisk, built in homage to the world-renowned Spanish-Puerto Rican cellist and human rights activist Pablo Casals, is an imposing example of monumental sculpture by French-born artist Arman.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art offers detailed entries on 64 artworks in the original 2003 garden, as well as a bibliography and overview of the garden’s founding. 192 pages, hardcover. Edited by Miranda Lash. $49.95
What`s your favorite sport to watch in the Olympics? 🛶🤺💦🤸🛹🏋️
We`re getting in the mood for the Paris Summer Games by remembering when @nbcolympics popped up in front of NOMA in 2022.
—
📷: @dpritykin
...
On Thursday, August 15, join the museum’s book club for a discussion about Tania James’s “Loot.” 📚
NOMA’s book club meets monthly to discuss fiction and non-fiction books inspired by art in the museum’s collection and exhibitions. Copies are available at the @nomamuseumshop, @nolalibrary, or your favorite place to find books.
Visit noma.org/read for more program information.
...
Thank you @stcharlesavenuemag for spotlighting the chairs of this fall`s Visionaries Gala and Garden Party Presented by First Horizon Bank on your July cover!
Celebrating 20 years of NOMA`s Besthoff Sculpture Garden, the two events—on Thursday, November 7, and Friday, November 8—will highlight the natural and artistic beauty of the garden.
All funds raised from the Visionaries Gala and Garden Party support the future of NOMA and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden.
Click the link in our bio to learn more and get your ticket today.
...
Swipe to explore a scene of natural beauty, erudite conversation, and convivial consumption. 🍃🍶
Currently on view at NOMA, this folding screen and its pair present a lively and engaging scene of scholars gathered together in a rural setting. Yokoi Kinkoku, one of the great individualist painters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Japan, chose as his subject an 8th-century drinking poem by the Chinese poet Du Fu. The poem documented an actual drinking club made up of eight Tang-dynasty scholars, famed for their capacity to consume copious amounts of alcohol. The red-robed fellow being dragged along, visible in slide number two, is Li Bo, another of the greatest poets in Chinese history.
A monk of the Shugendo sect, Kinkoku was an irreverent iconoclast who, due to his habitual drunkenness and disregard for orthodoxy, was removed from positions of authority in several monastic establishments. Eventually he found stability and notoriety in Shugendo, a syncretic religion that brought together Shinto mountain worship, Buddhism, and folk religion.
Among its spiritual exercises was ritualized mountain climbing, thought to bring its practitioners supernatural power. Kinkoku is now recognized as an idiosyncratic and inventive painter, famous for his dense mountain landscapes, as well as lively figural depictions.
This folding screen is currently on view in "Envisioning Japan: Transformational Gifts from Kurt A. Gitter, MD, and Alice Yelen Gitter," which honors more than five decades of philanthropy by the Gitters.
—
🎨: Yokoi Kinkoku, "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup," 1815. Ink and color on paper. Museum Purchase, 2023.2.a,b.
📍: Third floor, Kurt A. Gitter, MD, and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery
...
Cool off at the museum with wellness programming from @moveyabrass filled with gentle movement, breathwork, and sound baths. 🧘
Led by instructor Kathleen Barry, these low-intensity classes invite participants to move inward and restore themselves this summer.
Enjoy the AC and the creative energy throughout the museum every Thursday morning through August 22.
Classes are free with advance registration. Click the link in our bio to reserve your spot today.
...
Did you know that #EdgarDegas created sculptures as well as paintings? 🧑🎨
The artist only exhibited sculpture once during his lifetime, and in these two examples on view on NOMA’s second floor, visitors can see how Degas used three dimensions to explore movement and space.
#Degas was born #OnThisDay in 1834 in Paris.
—
🎨: Edgar Degas, “Walking Horse,” c. 1880. Bronze. Gift of the Musson Family, 50.4.
🎨: Edgar Degas, “Dancer Adjusting Her Stocking.” Bronze. Museum purchase through the Ella West Freeman Foundation Matching Fund, 72.21
📍: Second floor, Blumenthal Stich Jepsen Gallery
...
We’re making continual changes to bring all of our engaging digital offerings to the forefront of our website. We invite you to keep coming back for new content and exciting updates!
Discover artworks, collections, and stories in a digital format from NOMA like never before.
