Education

Video: Creative Aging at the New Orleans Museum of Art

In 2022, E.A. Michelson Philanthropy awarded the New Orleans Museum of Art a grant to jumpstart the institution’s Art Thrives program, designed to engage adults ages 55 and older through the arts. Part of a larger “creative aging” movement across the country, Art Thrives provides the opportunity for older audiences to learn new creative skills and build community. Read More

Educator Guide for Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club

This Educator Guide accompanies the exhibition Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, on view at NOMA February 10 – May 7, 2023. In it you will find an exhibition overview with major themes, biographical information about Jacob Lawrence and his contemporary artists affiliated with the Black Orpheus publication, select works of art, classroom lessons for before and after your museum visit, and directions for scheduling a visit to NOMA. Lessons and tours can be adapted across grade levels and used with any in-person visit or with provided digital images. Read More

Preteen Art Intensive: Ways of Knowing

This past summer, after a two-year hiatus, the museum welcomed young artists back to the museum for Summer Camp! In this second feature of a two-part series, we’re taking a moment to look back on the Preteen Intensive: Ways of Knowing, a new offering for youth, ages 11-13, to dive into works in the museum’s galleries and garden and spark their own creative projects.  Read More

Educator Guide for Queen Nefertari’s Egypt

This Educator Guide for Queen Nefertari’s Egypt includes sections highlighting five major exhibition themes pertaining to life and death during the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Images of works of art from the collection of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, are included. Making Connections questions throughout the guide invite comparison between ancient Egypt and today. The packet includes pre- and post-visit lessons that can be adapted across grade levels. Read More

Souvenirs of Earth: Responses to Dawn DeDeaux at NOMA

Souvenirs of Earth invites us all to consider what object we might take with us if forced to flee the Earth. Begun in 2014 by artist Dawn DeDeaux, Souvenirs of Earth responds to the increasing urgency of climate change, by asking us to confront the growing threat of humanity’s extinction. Over time, the project has evolved into a community portrait of loss and survival including everything from seeds and raw earth to postcards of famous paintings, frayed books, models of famous monuments and historical sites, ashes, and knots of hair.  Read More

NOMA’s Teen Art Council Visits Dawn DeDeaux at Camp Abundance

On a chilly November evening, members of the Teen Art Council (TAC) gathered under string lights on the patio at Camp Abundance, an artist residency and special event compound headed by artist and most generous host Dawn DeDeaux. DeDeaux’s retrospective exhibition The Space Between Worlds, currently on view at NOMA, has served as the focus of the TAC’s year thus far, fueling explorations in the galleries, conversations with NOMA staff members, and an upcoming creative offering for New Orleans teens. Read More

Redesigning Artful Minds for 2020–21

Since 2015, NOMA’s Learning and Engagement department has worked with Poydras Home to offer Artful Minds, a program for visitors with Alzheimer’s and other dementias and their caretakers. Typically, Artful Minds was offered nearly once a month. Poydras Home residents and their family members were able to visit NOMA in January and February 2020.  Then, like so many of the museums offerings during the coronavirus pandemic, it was necessary to redesign the Artful Minds program for the remainder of 2020. Read More

GIRLS NOLA Spends the Day at NOMA and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden

After several quiet months, the museum is slowly and safely welcoming small groups of young visitors back into our spaces, sprinkling chatter and laughter back into the sounds and rhythms of the galleries. Lit in hot pink on a Saturday in May, NOMA’s new Lapis Center for the Arts became home-for-a-day to GIRLS NOLA—the Girls Initiative for Reproducing Leaders in Society—for an incredibly special reunion and retreat.  Read More

New Harmony High Students Use Photography to Imagine the Future

Building on an ongoing collaboration between New Harmony and the New Orleans Photo Alliance, this spring NOMA collaborated with local students to explore the fundamentals of photography and curating with some of the city’s foremost artists. The culmination of this project, What Is Harmony?, is on view to the public on an exterior fence to the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden starting June 19. Read More