Current Exhibitions

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers

on view through January 8th, 2023

From photography’s beginnings in the United States, Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of the medium to produce beautiful portraits for their clients, while also making a variety of other photographic work in keeping with important movements like pictorialism, modernism, and abstraction. Called to the Camera illustrates the artistic virtuosity, social significance, and political impact of Black photographers working in commercial portrait studios during photography’s first century. Read More

Louise Bourgeois: Paintings

on view through January 1st, 2023

Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is the first comprehensive exhibition of paintings produced by the iconic French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) between her arrival in New York in 1938 and her turn to sculpture in the late 1940s. Read More

Robert Polidori: Recollections

on view through January 8th, 2023

Robert Polidori: Recollections presents a selection of photographs from the largest private collection of prints by Robert Polidori (Canadian-American, born 1951). Read More

Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans

on view through April 23rd, 2023

Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans mines New Orleans archives and gathers oral histories in the first monographic review of an artist that was celebrated by the 1950s American craft world. NOMA’s exhibition is the first presentation of Choy’s extraordinary ceramics in New Orleans since the artist’s Louisiana friends mounted the Katherine Choy Memorial Show at the Orleans Gallery in fall 1959. Read More

Picture Man: Portraits by Polo Silk

on view through January 8th, 2023

For more than three decades, Selwhyn Sthaddeus “Polo Silk” Terrell (American, born 1964) has been photographing Black New Orleans, creating a unique body of work that blends elements of portraiture, fashion, performance, and street photography. This exhibition explores how Polo Silk successfully blends all of those elements, while illustrating his role as an important part of photographic history. Read More

Anne Noggle: Herself

on view through February 12th, 2023

Trained as a pilot, Anne Noggle’s fearless and adventurous spirit is also seen in her second career as a photographer, curator, and educator. As an artist, Noggle often turned her camera to herself to document and explore the aging process for women. Read More

The Pursuit of Salvation: Jain Art from India

on view through October 2nd, 2022

The Jain faith has been continuously practiced in India since at least the sixth century BCE. Nonviolence, a respect for all living beings, and the belief in the existence of a permanent soul whose true nature is obscured by accumulated karma are core principles of Jainism. Created over a period of more than fifteen hundred years — the second through nineteenth centuries — the sculptures, paintings, and manuscripts on view in this exhibition of works loaned from the collection of Dr. Siddharth Bhansali illuminate iconographic and stylistic change as well as regional variation.  Read More

Arte Sacra: Roman Catholic Art from Portuguese India

on view through March 5th, 2023

In the centuries following the arrival of Francis Xavier, a Catholic missionary, in 1542, the state of Goa in western India became the administrative and economic center of a Portuguese empire that extended west to Africa and east to Malaysia, China, and Japan. The vast trade networks established by the Portuguese and Spanish allowed not only for the spread of Christianity, but also an unprecedented artistic exchange within these colonial empires. This exhibition, from the collection of Dr. Siddharth Bhansali, reveals both the global influence of European seventeenth- and eighteenth-century styles, as well as the transformation of these styles in the hands of Indian artists creating a new visual tradition. Read More

Upcoming Exhibitions

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club

on view starting February 10th, 2023

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club explores the connection between African American artist Jacob Lawrence and his contemporaries based in the Global South through the Nigerian publication Black Orpheus. The exhibition features over 125 objects, including Lawrence’s little-known 1964–65 Nigeria series, works by the artists featured in Black Orpheus, archival images, videos, and letters. Read More

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Past Exhibitions

Stela of Nakhi, “Servant in the Place of Truth”, Offering to Osiris and Anubis

Queen Nefertari’s Egypt

ended on July 17th, 2022

Queen Nefertari’s Egypt brings to life the role of Nefertari and other powerful women in ancient Egypt through 230 exceptional objects, including statues, jewelry, vases, papyrus, steles, wooden coffins, and stone sarcophagi, as well as tools and various items of daily life from the artisan village of Deir-el-Medina, home to those who created the royal tombs. Read More

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Exhibition Videos

Video: Reflections on Women in Ancient and Modern Egypt

Join Dr. Monica Hanna, College of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, in Aswan, Egypt, and moderator Dr. Haitham Eid, Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies Program, Southern University at New Orleans, in this virtual lecture presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Queen Nefertari’s Egypt. Read More

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