New Orleans Museum of Art

Tai Chi in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Wednesday
2026-09-30 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-10-07 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-10-14 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-10-21 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-10-28 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-11-04 09:00 - 10:00, 2026-11-11 09:00 - 10:00 (America/Chicago) | Louisiana
Experience wellness at NOMA with beginner-friendly, outdoor tai chi classes in the serene Besthoff Sculpture Garden. The first 30 minutes of class focus on simple celestial elemental Qigong forms, a gentle and accessible style of movement suitable for anyone. The second part of class explores progressive sequential movements from the “Tai Chi Easy” form developed by Roger Jahnke, O.M.D., director of Integral Institute of Tai Chi and Qigong Center.
In many martial, exercise, healing, and meditative traditions, attainment is the central aim. Our invitation is something different: to release, through the spirit of play, any obstruction that separates us from well being and harmony.
Class is $5 for members and $10 for the general public. Tai chi participants meet at the garden entrance on the corner of Collins Diboll Circle and Enrique Alferez Drive, across the street from Café NOMA. Please bring a digital or printed version of your ticket to class. Walk-ins are welcome and can pay with cash. If you are a member paying in cash, please also bring your membership card or member number.
REGISTER NOW
For Monday classes: register online by 3pm the day of class.
For Wednesday classes: register online by 3pm on the Tuesday before class.
These classes are outside and will be canceled for severe weather. Registrants will be notified of cancellation via email by 5 pm the day before class. Call 504.658.4128 or email education@noma.org with any questions.

Yoga in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Wednesday
2026-09-30 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-10-07 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-10-14 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-10-21 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-10-28 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-11-04 17:00 - 18:00, 2026-11-11 17:00 - 18:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
Experience wellness at NOMA with beginner-friendly, outdoor yoga classes in the serene Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Classes take place every Saturday morning and (beginning in late February 2026) every Wednesday evening.
Class is $5 for members and $10 for the general public. Enter at the main entrance gate to the Sculpture Garden on Dueling Oaks Drive. Please bring your own mat and a digital or printed version of your ticket to class. Walk-ins are welcome and can pay with cash. If you are a member paying in cash, please bring your membership card or member number.
REGISTER NOW
For Saturday Classes: register online by 3 pm the Friday before class.
For Wednesday Classes: register online by 3 pm the Tuesday before class.
These classes are outside and will be canceled for severe weather. Registrants will be notified of cancellation via email by 5 pm the day before class. Call 504.658.4128 or email education@noma.org with any questions.

Yoga in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Saturday
2026-10-03 08:00 - 09:00, 2026-10-10 08:00 - 09:00, 2026-10-17 08:00 - 09:00, 2026-10-24 08:00 - 09:00, 2026-10-31 08:00 - 09:00, 2026-11-07 08:00 - 09:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
Experience wellness at NOMA with beginner friendly, outdoor yoga classes in the serene Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Classes take place every Saturday morning and (beginning in late February 2026) every Wednesday evening.
Class is $5 for members and $10 for the general public. Enter at the main entrance gate to the Sculpture Garden on Dueling Oaks Drive. Please bring your own mat and a digital or printed version of your ticket to class. Walk-ins are welcome and can pay with cash. If you are a member paying in cash, please bring your membership card or member number.
REGISTER NOW
For Saturday Classes: register online by 3pm the Friday before class.
For Wednesday Classes: register online by 3pm the Tuesday before class.
These classes are outside and will be canceled for severe weather. Registrants will be notified of cancellation via email by 5 pm the day before class. Call 504.658.4128 or email education@noma.org with any questions.

Tai Chi in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Monday
2026-10-05 18:00 - 19:00, 2026-10-12 18:00 - 19:00, 2026-10-19 18:00 - 19:00, 2026-10-26 18:00 - 19:00, 2026-11-02 18:00 - 19:00, 2026-11-09 18:00 - 19:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124

Book Club: Stranger in the Shogun's City by Amy Stanley
2026-10-15 12:00 - 13:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
NOMA’s book club meets monthly to discuss fiction and non-fiction books related to art in the museum’s collection and exhibitions.
This month’s book club selection is Stranger in the Shogun’s City by Amy Stanley, a vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo–the city that would become Tokyo–and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West.
Register Now

About NOMA’s Book Club
NOMA’s book club is an informal group open to anyone on a month-to-month basis. You do not have to attend every meeting or read every book to participate. In addition to monthly book discussions, the book club meets periodically for curatorial programs related to the book selections.
Books are selected in advance and planned according to the museum’s exhibition schedule. Participants are expected to procure their own copy of the titles. Selections are also available at the NOMA Museum Shop, where museum members receive a 10% discount.
Meetings are held in person or via Zoom. All meetings begin at 12 pm. For more information or questions, please email programs@noma.org.

About the Book
Stranger in the Shogun’s City
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography – Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award – Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Stranger in the Shogun’s City is a history of a city: Tokyo (which was then called Edo) in the first half of the nineteenth century. It’s also the story of a rebellious, discontented woman who sacrificed everything to be there. The book follows her from her childhood in Japan’s snow country, through three catastrophic marriages and a devastating famine, to her escape to the shogun’s capital. It’s about how a woman used the city to recreate herself — as a maidservant, a tenement-dweller, a samurai’s wife — and how she, and others like her, built the global megalopolis we know today.
The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces–and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval–she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.
With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture–and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions.
Immersive and fascinating, Stranger in the Shogun’s City is a revelatory work of history, layered with rich detail and delivered with beautiful prose, about the life of a woman, a city, and a culture.
-description from Scribner Book Company
About the Author
Skye Jackson is an award-winning writer and editor from New Orleans, LA, whose poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Green Mountains Review, and was hand selected by Billy Collins for inclusion in the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project. In 2023, she was a finalist for the Iowa Review Poetry Award. She currently teaches at Xavier University.

Music in the Garden: October 25
2026-10-25 14:00 - 16:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
This year, experience the seasons change at NOMA with Music in the Garden! Enjoy local musicians performing alongside artworks new and old in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden on Sunday afternoons February 22nd, April 12th, October 25th, and November 15th.
More information about the schedule and performers for Sunday, October 25’s Music in the Garden will be available soon. Please check this page for updates.
This program is free and open to the public, with registration recommended. Individuals who register will receive notifications of weather-related location changes.
Register Now

Performance Schedule
Schedule and Locations
More information about the schedule for this Music in the Garden performance incoming. Please check this page for updates.
Download a Besthoff Sculpture Garden Map Here

Book Club: Call Me Larry: A Creole Man's Triumph Over Racism and Homophobia by Larry Bagneris Jr. and Ryan Gomez
2026-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
NOMA’s book club meets monthly to discuss fiction and non-fiction books related to art in the museum’s collection and exhibitions.
This month’s book club selection is Call Me Larry: A Creole Man’s Triumph Over Racism and Homophobia by Larry Bagneris Jr. and Ryan Gomez , a bracing, uplifting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud memoir in which Larry Bagneris recalls his activist career as founder of Houston’s Pride Parade and then, following a return to his hometown, as political organizer and mainstay of the local gay community.
Register Now

About NOMA’s Book Club
NOMA’s book club is an informal group open to anyone on a month-to-month basis. You do not have to attend every meeting or read every book to participate. In addition to monthly book discussions, the book club meets periodically for curatorial programs related to the book selections.
Books are selected in advance and planned according to the museum’s exhibition schedule. Participants are expected to procure their own copy of the titles. Selections are also available at the NOMA Museum Shop, where museum members receive a 10% discount.
Meetings are held in person or via Zoom. All meetings begin at 12 pm. For more information or questions, please email programs@noma.org.

About the Book
Call Me Larry: A Creole Man’s Triumph over Racism and Homophobia
Raised in a large, loving Creole family, Lawrence Bagneris Jr. knew from a young age that he liked boys. But New Orleans in the 1950s and early 1960s wasn’t an easy place to be out. In high school, he channeled his energies into the Civil Rights Movement. By college, he was exploring the gay bars of the French Quarter— and telling new acquaintances to ask for Larry, not Lawrence, when they phoned him at home. It wasn’t until his 1969 move to Houston that the many strands of his Creole identity—Black, white, Catholic—coalesced into a powerful political force for gay rights.
In this bracing, uplifting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud memoir, Larry Bagneris recalls his activist career: as founder of Houston’s Pride Parade and then, following a return to his hometown, as political organizer and mainstay of the local gay community. He invites us to join him on his travels, as well—from San Francisco to New York, Tel Aviv to Singapore—as he builds community, and finds family, in queer spaces around the world.
-description from Historic New Orleans Collection
About the Authors
Larry Bagneris is a social and political activist and Executive Director of the City of New Orleans Human Relations Commission. Ryan Gomez is a data analyst in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.

Musical Encounters: November 11
2026-11-11 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Join us for NOMA’s Musical Encounters Gallery Talk series, where local musicians and scholars host conversations connecting their practice to works on view in the museum’s collection. This year’s Musical Encounters gallery talks will take place at 6 pm on Wednesdays April 1, June 10, August 26, and November 11.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location. No registration is required for this event series.

About the Speaker
More information about this Musical Encounters gallery talk will be available soon. Please check this page for updates.
See All Upcoming Gallery Talks
