Join NOMA staff and fellow book lovers as we read and discuss fiction and nonfiction books related to art, artists, art museums, NOMA’s collections and exhibitions. Our full 2018 schedule and reading list has been announced.

Organized by NOMA’s Felix J. Dreyfous Library, the Book Club is an informal group. You do not have to attend every meeting and we understand if you have to leave a discussion or program early. The book club offers several types of programs: a book discussion group that meets once a month (no reading in December), curatorial programs, field trips, and Meet the Author receptions. Most book club programs start promptly at noon, but please arrive at 11:30 a.m. if you wish to bring a sack lunch or meet beforehand. NOMA will provide water and soft drinks.

RSVP for the meetings you wish to attend so we can prepare the meeting space.

Please contact Sheila A. Cork at 504.658.4117 or scork@noma.org for information about joining the NOMA Book Club.

May 2018 Selection

Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse by Stanley Meisler

St. Martin’s Press, 2015. ISBN: 978-1137278807

For a couple of decades before World War II, a group of immigrant painters and sculptors, including Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, and Jules Pascin dominated the new art scene of Montparnasse in Paris. Art critics gave them the name “the School of Paris” to set them apart from the French-born (and less talented) young artists of the period. Soutine arrived in Paris while many painters were experimenting with cubism, but he had no time for trends and fashions; like his art, Soutine was intense, demonic, and fierce. After the defeat of France by Hitler’s Germany, the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had made their way to France for sanctuary were no longer safe. In constant fear of the French police and the German Gestapo, plagued by poor health and bouts of depression, Soutine was the epitome of the tortured artist. Rich in period detail, Stanley Meisler’s Shocking Paris explores the short, dramatic life of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. (Amazon.com)

Thursday, May 10, 12 – 1 pm | Curatorial Program with Allison Young, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow for Modern and Contemporary Art