Current Exhibitions

Photogenic: Selections from the James and Cherye Pierce Collection

on view through September 10th, 2023

Presenting a selection of recent and promised gifts from collectors James and Cherye Pierce, Photogenic celebrates the monumental impact of the Pierces’ longtime support of the museum’s renowned photography collection as well as their dedication to collecting photography for almost 50 years. Read More

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club

on view through May 7th, 2023

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club explores the connection between African American artist Jacob Lawrence and his contemporaries based in West Africa 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

Monochromes: Japanese Zen Paintings and Ceramics

on view through June 4th, 2023

In this exhibition, Zen paintings and calligraphies created during the Edo period (1603–1867) and monochrome or unglazed ceramics produced primarily during the past fifty years are presented in dialogue with each other. Read More

Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans

on view through April 16th, 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

Upcoming Exhibitions

Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection

on view starting May 5th, 2023

Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection presents avant-garde rings by artists who have reinvented this enduring jewelry form with a distinctly contemporary sense of experimental craft. Read More


Past Exhibitions

Arte Sacra: Roman Catholic Art from Portuguese India

ended on March 12th, 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


Exhibition Videos

Video: Jacob Lawrence Visits Nigeria

Jacob Lawrence’s two visits to Nigeria in 1962 and 1964 influenced an entire body of work, now on view in Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club. In this short video, Curator of Education Tracy Kennan shares a little about how those trips impacted the celebrated artist’s vision. Read More