Past Exhibitions

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

Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp

ended on February 25th, 2018

The international triennial Prospect.4 (P.4) is a citywide exhibition at venues across metro New Orleans. P.4 takes the city’s distinctive character as a point of departure to investigate global concerns. Works by seven artists are on view at NOMA. Read More

African Art: The Bequest from the Françoise Billion Richardson Charitable Trust

ended on November 6th, 2017

NOMA is proud to present a selection of African art from the bequest of the Françoise Billion Richardson Charitable Trust. Françoise was the individual most responsible for the development and success of the museum’s sub-Saharan African collection, through her encouragement, assistance and unwavering enthusiasm over the years. Françoise endowed NOMA’s curatorship for African art, established an African art purchase fund and funded the building of the present African galleries, which are named for her parents, on NOMA’s third floor. Read More

Regina Scully | Japanese Landscape: Inner Journeys

ended on October 15th, 2017

The commonality between the works of contemporary New Orleans artist Regina Scully and the paintings of 18th and 19th-century Edo-period Japanese artists are explored in a random pairing of works in the Asian art galleries. Read More

Jim Steg: New Work

ended on October 8th, 2017

Jim Steg was the most influential printmaker to be based in New Orleans. A longtime beloved professor of art at Newcomb College, this exhibition reveals Steg as both an innovator in the field of printmaking, and an artist at the forefront of several major twentieth-century movements. Read More

A Life of Seduction: Venice in the 1700s

ended on May 21st, 2017

An exhibition exploring 18th-century Venice features fashion, pageantry, ceremonies, and street life. An exquisite gondola finial, 18th-century costumes and Carnival masks, a puppet theater, and view paintings depicting the fabled “Queen of the Adriatic” are among the works on display. Read More

Kenneth Josephson: Photography Is

ended on February 19th, 2017

This exhibition presents a brief survey of the work of Kenneth Josephson (American, born 1932), one of the most inventive photographers of the second half of the twentieth century. Read More

George Dunbar: Elements of Chance

ended on February 19th, 2017

This exhibition surveys the career of George Dunbar (American, born 1927), who played a pivotal role in introducing abstract art to the South. Read More

Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection

ended on January 16th, 2017

Seeing Nature explores the development of landscape painting, from a small window on the world to interpretations of artists’ personal experiences with their surroundings on land and sea. It reveals the power of landscape to locate the viewer in time and place—to record, explore, and understand the natural and man-made world. This exhibition presents masterpieces… Read More

Upcoming Exhibitions


Current Exhibitions

Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined

on view through July 14th, 2024

This major solo exhibition of work by Wangechi Mutu brings together nearly one hundred sculptures, paintings, collages, drawings, and films to present the breadth of the Kenyan–American artist’s multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1990s to today. Read More


Exhibition Videos