Staging Shakespeare in the Grand Hall of the New Orleans Museum of Art By Will Coviello | Gambit Weekly This review originally appeared here In Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, it’s easy for a director to produce laughs with a drunk and insistent Sir Toby Belch and a pompous Malvolio, who is… Read More

The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Collection of photorealist canvases reveals subtle painterly magic By D. Eric Bookhardt | Gambit Weekly This review originally appeared here It’s no secret Sydney and Walda Besthoff are big-time art lovers, but the size of their photorealist painting collection, which takes up the back half of NOMA’s first-floor galleries, may… Read More

By John d’Addario | The New Orleans Advocate This article originally appeared here Painting and photography have always had a complex relationship. Conceived as an adjunct to painting in the earliest years of its development in the first decades of the 19th century, when many painters discovered how useful photographs could be in composing their… Read More

By Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune This article originally appeared here A mind-blowing painting exhibit titled “Photorealism:The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Collection” opens to the public Saturday (Nov. 8) at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Unlike many contemporary shows, it’s not an exhibit that proffers a social concept or psychological sub-text. It’s an… Read More

By Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune This article originally appeared here Edgar Degas’ 1880 sculpture, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen” goes on display in a second floor gallery at the New Orleans Museum of Art Friday (Oct. 10). Of the scores of sculptures Degas (1834-1917) produced, she’s the largest and best known. She’s the only… Read More

By Kathleen DesHotel | The New Orleans Advocate This article originally appeared here In New Orleans, a person can buy a dozen oysters on the half shell or second-line with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. In Covington, art appreciators can view one dozen beautiful works that exemplify the culture, spirit, tradition or geography of greater… Read More

By John d’Addario | The New Orleans Advocate This article originally appeared here You’d be forgiven for not immediately thinking “fine art” and “Hollywood” in the same sentence. After all, most big budget movies these days aren’t exactly known for artistic ambition. There are many reasons you might want to see “Guardians of the Galaxy”… Read More

D. Eric Bookhardt on the exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art By D. Eric Bookhardt | Gambit Weekly This review originally appeared here The title Behind Closed Doors sounds racy, but the subtitle, Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492-1898, suggests something more sedate. In fact, this overview of how the newly rich… Read More

By Cheryl Castjohn | NOLA Defender This article originally appeared here “Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492-1898” opened Friday at the New Orleans Museum of Art, compliments of the Brooklyn Museum. To the exhibit, NOMAadds eleven objects from its own Spanish Colonial Collection.NOMA and “Closed Doors” mesh well together, and not… Read More

By John d’Addario | The New Orleans Advocate This article originally appeared here It isn’t hard to find evidence of the 18th-century French influence in present-day New Orleans. From the very name of the city itself and its centerpiece, the French Quarter, to the continued popularity of French-inflected cuisine, decorative arts and even vocabulary, constant… Read More

By Doug MacCash, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune This article originally appeared here My second favorite artwork in the “Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish-American Home 1492 to 1898” exhibit that opens at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Friday (June 20) is the huge 1780 portrait of Dona Mariana Belsunse Salasar of Lima… Read More

By Dr. Sara Hollis | The New Orleans Tribune This article originally appeared here The huge colorful heroic murals that artist and professor Hale Woodruff painted at Talladega College between 1939 and 1942 are a remarkable accomplishment. And now through Sept. 14, they are on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The murals… Read More

Through August 24th, in a brief and beautifully-positioned hallway of NOMA known as the “A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Gallery” sits a tiny photography show culled from the museum’s permanent collection. It is a show which is as much about collaboration as it is about the unsung, undocumented influence of women in art…. Read More

By Will Coviello | Gambit Weekly This article originally appeared here The Humpty Dumpty in The NOLA Project’s Adventures in Wonderland, a semi-participatory dramatic adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s two novels about Alice, doesn’t sit on a wall. He hangs out on a bridge in the middle of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Instead… Read More

By Dorothy Spears | The New York Times This article originally appeared here ELIMINATING lead poisoning from the lives of children is not a typical goal of art. But for Mel Chin, the borders of art have long extended past the crafting of discrete objects. “I like this idea of unexpected relationships,” said Mr. Chin,… Read More

By John d’Addario | Hyperallergic This review originally appeared here NEW ORLEANS – Considering that one of Mel Chin’s most audacious works appeared before an audience of millions on network television over a two-year period, it’s curious that he’s not more of a household name. That piece, “In the Name of the Place” (1995-1997), ran… Read More