Friday Nights at NOMA opens the museum’s doors for many interesting activities throughout the year: live music, movies, children’s activities, and more. Regular admission prices apply—NOMA members are FREE—but there is no extra charge for programs or films. All galleries, Café NOMA, and the Museum Shop remain open till 9 pm.

• 5 – 8 pm: Art on the Spot family activity table
• 5:30 – 8:30 pm: Music by Garth Alper Quartet
• 6 pm: Gallery tour of Teaching Beyond Doctrine: Painting and Calligraphy by Zen Masters
• 6 pm: Artful Palate cooking demonstration at Café NOMA
• 6 pm: Picturing Us Film Series: Prejudice and Pride
• 7 pm: “Hell Hell Hell/Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan and Revelation,” a lecture by artist Lesley Dill from Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories

ABOUT GARTH ALPER QUARTET

Dr. Garth Alper is the coordinator of Jazz Studies at the University of Louisiana Lafayette School of Music, where he holds the Ruth Stodghill Girard Professorship. Dr. Alper teaches in the Jazz Piano, Jazz Studies, and Music Media areas, and has had six articles published on the subjects of jazz, popular music, and postmodernism in music.

In discussing Garth’s newest CD, critic Edward Blanco from All About Jazz notes, “Alper crafts another intriguing musical package with Stratus, a recording that contains all of the elements of a successful project—musicianship; excellent compositions; and plenty of ‘artistry in rhythm,’ as Stan Kenton would say—all resulting in an all-around pleasurable musical experience.” In a review from Off Beat, Ken Franckling states, “Familiarity and trust abound here as [the musicians] explore a variety of moods on seven original compositions and two standards from the jazz canon. The players have a sense where each other are headed, and find ways to complement that journey.”

ABOUT ARTFUL PALATE COOKING DEMONSTRATIONS

Chefs of the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group will demonstrate their own culinary masterpieces at Café NOMA’s “Artful Palate,” the seventh annual summer cooking series featuring seven artfully inspired demonstrations at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

In conjunction with the launch of NOMA’s exhibition Changing Course: Reflecting on New Orleans Histories, the talented executive chefs and sous chefs will share their culinary vision by commemorating the past and looking to the future by offering a contemporary twist on iconic New Orleans dishes.

This evening, Kris Padalino, Brennan’s pastry chef, will prepare tarte a la bouillie.

Linn Quinton weeps as he is helped by New Orleans firefighters after he escaped from a fire at the UpStairs bar, June 25, 1973. Quinton said he was with a group singing around a piano when the fire swept through the bar leaving 29 dead and 15 injured. (AP Photo/RL)

ABOUT PREJUDICE AND PRIDE

Upon the forty-fifth anniversary of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy, Prejudice and Pride recounts the fire and the aftermath that swept through New Orleans via new interviews with survivors, first responders, activists, journalists and family members of the dead. The film will be screened in conjunction with artist Skylar Fein’s installation Remember the UpStairs Lounge, on display in the exhibition Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories.

The ABC News investigative team uncovers yet another tragedy—a victim and World War II veteran stripped of all dignity, discarded in an unmarked grave on the fringe of the city. On the trail to uncover his whereabouts, Prejudice and Pride journeys from the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter to its desolate outskirts. Can his family find him and the closure they seek? And will the UpStairs Lounge fire finally take its rightful place in gay rights’ history? (2018 | Not rated | 28 minutes) Watch the trailer.

ABOUT LESLEY DILL

In this lecture, artist Lesley Dill will explore her installation Hell Hell Hell / Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan, on view in Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories. Inspired by the life of the late preacher, artist, musician, and poet Sister Gertrude Morgan, known both for her work as a painter and as a street evangelist in New Orleans, Dill pays tribute to Morgan’s legacy, and the power of revelation. Dill is an American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art. Her elegant sculptures, art installations, mixed-media photographs, and evocative performances draw from both her travels abroad and profound interests in spirituality and the world’s faith traditions. Exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche, Dill invests new meaning in the human form. Intellectually and aesthetically engaging, the core of her work emerges from an essential, visionary awareness of the world.

Dill has had over a hundred solo exhibitions. Her artworks are in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2017 she was named a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Her opera, Divide Light based on the poems of Emily Dickinson was performed in San Jose in 2008. And in 2018, a new version premiered at the New Camerata Opera Company in New York City. Dill lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Friday Nights at NOMA is supported in part by grant funds from the Azby Fund; Ruby K. Worner Charitable Trust; New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation; and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council.