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 pm: Drumming by Luther Gray in the Ella West Freeman Galleries
• 5:30 – 8:30 pm: Music by Alfred Banks in the Great Hall

Small Talks with artists represented in Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories:

• 6 pm: L. Kasimu Harris
• 6:30 pm: Skylar Fein
• 7 pm: Willie Birch

ABOUT ALFRED BANKS

The emergent New Orleans rapper Alfred Banks has garnered critical acclaim from some of rap’s most esteemed publications. In addition to being named one of Complex.com’s 10 upcoming New Orleans MCs, Banks has been featured prominently on HipHopDx, Okayplayer & on DJBooth’s list of top indie rappers from Louisiana. Having played at Voodoo Festival, Buku Festival, Atlanta’s A3C Festival, and Austin’s SXSW, Banks has also made headway in Europe, starring in a Volkswagen ad campaign featuring his song “HomeComing.” Most Recently, Alfred’s Song “UnderDogCentral” can be heard in the Netflix Movie Burning Sands. Banks recently released his third LP, The Beautiful.

ABOUT L. KASIMU HARRIS

L. Kasimu Harris is a storyteller who uses writing, photography and video to push the narrative. Images from his War on the Benighted series are a part of the group exhibition, Changing Course: Reflection of New Orleans Histories.  War on the Benighted  is a narrative constructed reality series about New Orleans public school students who became frustrated with the inequalities in education; they rose up and began a quest to educate themselves. Their grievances include the school-to-prison pipeline, emphasis on standardized testing, and a diminishing arts curriculum.

Harris is a New Orleans native who has participated in twenty group exhibitions across the US, two abroad, and three solo photography exhibitions. In 2015, his work was exhibited in both The Rising and Louisiana Contemporary at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and garnered coverage in The New York Times and NPR. He also a featured artist in Dandy Lion (Re) Articulating Black Masculinity, curated by Shantrelle P. Lewis, a  traveling exhibition with the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago that has traveled to San Francisco, Miami, and London.

ABOUT SKYLAR FEIN

Skylar Fein was born in Greenwich Village and raised in the Bronx. He has had many careers including teaching nonviolent resistance under the umbrella of the Quakers, working for a gay film festival in Seattle, stringing for The New York Times and as pre-med student at University of New Orleans where he moved one week before Hurricane Katrina hit. In the wreckage of New Orleans, Fein found his new calling as an artist, experimenting with color and composition of the detritus of Katrina. His work soon became known for its pop sensibility as well as its hard-nosed politics. After a few starring roles in group shows, he had his first solo show in May 2008 at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans.

In the fall of 2008, his Prospect.1: Biennial installation, Remember the Upstairs Lounge, shined a spotlight on an overlooked piece of New Orleans history: a fire that swept through a French Quarter bar in 1973, killing everyone inside. The worst fire in New Orleans history has never been solved. His installation walked visitors right through the swinging bar doors, and offered visual riffs on politics and sexuality circa 1973. The piece was praised in ArtForum, Art In America, The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, among others.

ABOUT WILLIE BIRCH

Willie Birch is a New Orleans-based artist who draws inspiration from this city and the complexity of its diverse traditions and histories. Working in a variety of mediums, from paper mache to acrylic and charcoal on paper, he renders second lines, street musicians and the architecture of New Orleans with a nuanced eye towards intimate details—power lines and chain linked fences, discarded sneakers and wood-paneled shot-gun houses that bear traces of their histories. Birch’s recent work questions the role that history plays in determining our present and future. His installation for Changing Course will present new works that focus on roots and bones, the largely invisible structures that both sustain and support what we see above and around them. At the same time, his work will refer museum visitors to associated artwork and performances staged offsite at a community-driven arts space that Birch is creating in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward.