Past Exhibitions

The Orléans Collection

ended on January 27th, 2019

In celebration of the city of New Orleans Tricentennial, NOMA presents The Orleans Collection, an exhibition of selections from the magnificent collection of the city’s namesake, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. This exhibition reunites a representative group of forty European masterpieces from the Duke’s collection, gathered from museums and galleries across the US and Europe, to tell the complex story of the collection’s formation, reputation, dispersal, and impact for later generations. Read More

Teaching Beyond Doctrine: Painting and Calligraphy by Zen Masters

ended on January 20th, 2019

Painting and calligraphy by Zen monks has a long history in Japan. Introduced from China in the twefth century, Zen (meaning “meditation”) has its origins in the teachings of the Buddha, the sixth-century BCE Indian prince who taught that it was possible to be freed from suffering and the cycles of rebirth. Read More

Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred.

ended on January 6th, 2019

Lina Iris Viktor is widely recognized for her exploration of art’s connection to history, spirituality, and prophecy. Recasting factual and fantastical narratives surrounding America’s involvement in the founding of Liberia, Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred. explores a mythicized history of the West African nation. Read More

Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories

ended on September 16th, 2018

Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories marks New Orleans’ three-hundredth anniversary by bringing together a group of seven contemporary art projects that focus on forgotten or marginalized histories of the city. Read More

Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored

ended on September 3rd, 2018

NOMA is only the second US museum to host this focused exhibition on two recently conserved and rarely seen paintings by the celebrated Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), St. Jerome in the Wilderness and St. Agatha Visited in Prison by St. Peter.  Read More

Carlos Rolón: Outside/In

ended on August 26th, 2018

Carlos Rolón is internationally recognized for his paintings, sculptures and installations that break down walls. Working with shattered glass, wrought iron fences, and construction cinderblocks, his art takes these barriers to access and transforms them into new points of entry. Outside/In explores the rich connections between New Orleans, Latin America, and the Caribbean through allusions to each region’s natural and built environments. Read More

Lee Friedlander in Louisiana

ended on August 12th, 2018

One of the most famous living American photographers, Lee Friedlander has been visiting Louisiana since 1957 to document New Orleans jazz and to make artful street photographs. Lee Friedlander in Louisiana is the first major exhibition in any institution to examine the full scope and influence of Friedlander’s work in the region on the history of photography. Read More

Personalities in Clay: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection

ended on July 8th, 2018

In the 20th-century, remarkably creative American potters evolved clay into an expressive art form, free from the confines of function or industrial production. Personalities in Clay: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection showcases the collection of John Bullard, NOMA’s director emeritus, a promised gift to the New Orleans Museum of Art. This exhibition and catalogue chart the major figures in handmade, studio pottery from 1940 to the end of the 20th century. Read More

Lee Friedlander: American Musicians

ended on June 17th, 2018

Lee Friedlander took promotional portraits for a number of recording companies beginning in the mid-1950s and through the 1970s. Most well-known for his work with Atlantic Records, many of his session photographs became classic jazz, country, and rhythm and blues record album covers. Read More

A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes

ended on May 28th, 2018

Experimental gowns, headpieces, and jewelry by avant-garde fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Gypsy Sport, and Iris van Herpen investigate symbols of womanhood and challenge conventional notions of beauty. More than 100 articles of daring fashion are presented in a dramatic gallery design that explores eight archetypal personality types. Read More

Bror Anders Wikstrom: Bringing Fantasy to Carnival

ended on April 1st, 2018

Bror Anders Wikstrom arrived in New Orleans from Sweden by 1883 and is best remembered as a designer for elaborate Mardi Gras productions. Through the 1880s and 1890s, his fantastical designs elevated the extravaganza of Carnival. This exhibition includes watercolor sketches for parade floats and costumes. Read More

Upcoming Exhibitions

Keith Sonnier: Until Today

on view starting March 15th, 2019

This exhibition marks first comprehensive museum survey for Keith Sonnier, a pioneering figure in conceptual, post-minimal, video and performance art of the late 1960s. Born in Grand Mamou, Louisiana, in 1941, Sonnier was one of the first artists to incorporate light into sculpture: an innovation that forms the foundation of his subsequent work. Read More

Paper Revolutions: French Drawings from the New Orleans Museum of Art

on view starting April 10th, 2019

Paper Revolutions: French Drawings from the New Orleans Museum of Art traces the politics of draftsmanship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This selection features works on paper by celebrated painters Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, as well as lesser-known artists, such as Nicolas Lejeune. Read More

Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse

on view starting April 25th, 2019

Timothy Duffy creates one-of-a-kind direct positive tintype portraits of American musicians using an American photography process that goes back to the nineteenth-century. Despite the importance of these musicians and the national legacy they represent, they remain little known, often outpaced by other popular performers who have built their own careers on top of the “roots” of these musicians and their ancestors. Read More

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Current Exhibitions

Bondye: Between and Beyond

on view through October 13th, 2019

Louisiana-born artist Tina Girouard created twelve sequined prayer flags inspired by the religious rituals of Vodou in a cultural exchange with Haitian artists in Port-au-Prince, . Read More

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Exhibition Videos

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