Collections

Greenwood Parlor installation recognizes all lives lived at a Louisiana plantation

In 2014, NOMA acquired the parlor furnishings from Greenwood Plantation, today called Butler-Greenwood, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. In its installation, NOMA has taken thoughtful steps to present the parlor’s story and recognize all the lives lived at Greenwood Plantation—original purchaser Harriet Mathews, her family, and, equally, the enslaved men, women, and children whose labor created their wealth.  Read More

NOMA acquires rare 19th-century jardinière made by short-lived New Orleans Art Pottery

NOMA recently acquired a jardinière that was crafted around 1890 at the short-lived New Orleans Art Pottery. Though this small operation only produced pots for a few years, it carries outsized significance as one of the earliest American art potteries and an important precursor to the cherished pottery that thrived for decades at New Orleans’s Newcomb College. Read More

Clementine Hunter’s Mural Practice

In the spring of 2018, NOMA acquired a monumental mural painting by Clementine Hunter (1887–1988), one of Louisiana’s most beloved and accomplished artists. An extremely rare example of one of the large-scale, site-specific murals Hunter created for the interiors of Melrose Plantation in the Cane River region near Natchitoches, where she spent much of her life working as a field hand before pursuing her talent as a painter after age 50. Read More