Past Exhibitions

Katie Holten: Drawn to the Edge (The Great Hall Project)

ended on September 9th, 2012

This summer the New Orleans Museum of Art is pleased to present a new work by Katie Holten (born 1975, Dublin, Ireland) for the 2012 iteration of the Great Hall Project series, which is designed to debut large-scale site-specific installations in NOMA’s Great Hall space. Read More

What is a Photograph?

ended on August 19th, 2012

This exhibition describes and includes many of the most common photographic processes (daguerreotypes, salted paper prints, gelatin silver prints, and inkjet prints), but it also includes objects, artifacts, and practices that have typically been considered marginal to the history of photography (reproductions of photographs in ink, negatives, camera-less photographs, cartes-de-visite, color processes, and even a piece of jewelry). Read More

Making a Mark: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection

ended on April 8th, 2012

This exhibition includes works in a variety of media- sculptures, prints, paintings, and photographic collages- but the Vogels were especially interested in drawings of all kinds, from preparatory sketches and designs for sculptures to discrete finished works. Read More

Wayne Gonzales: Light to Dark / Dark to Light

ended on February 26th, 2012

The exhibition features paintings depicting crowds, which Gonzales is well‐known for, including waiting crowds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The newest painting is a large blue Seated Crowd completed this year, depicts a passive audience in a movie theater. Gonzales will also paint two original murals on the walls of the galleries that will contrast idyllic scenes of nature with war images. Read More

Prospect.2

ended on January 29th, 2012

Founded by the curator Dan Cameron, Prospect New Orleans is one of the leading biennials of international contemporary art in the United States. Conceived in the tradition of the great… Read More

Bookmarks: The Artist’s Response to Text

ended on November 28th, 2011

The genre of the livre d’artiste emerged in the late 19th century and astonished contemporaries. This marked the first time artwork been arranged within a book, allowing for the interaction of pictures and text. Read More

Residents and Visitors: 20th-Century Photographs of Louisiana

ended on November 28th, 2011

The exhibition drew from the holdings of both museums and featured more than 100 photographs by artists who lived or worked in Louisiana. Offering glimpses of Louisiana and its people throughout the 20th century, Residents and Visitors also displayed the evolution of photographic technology. Read More

Ancestors of Congo Square: African Art in the New Orleans Museum of Art

ended on July 17th, 2011

Ancestors of Congo Square: African Art in the New Orleans Museum of Art, on display May 13 to July 17. In keeping with the spirit of NOMA’s centennial year, the Museum will be highlighting one of the most impressive areas of its permanent collection: its extensive holdings in African art. Read More

Upcoming Exhibitions

Sèvres Magnifique: French Porcelain from the Collection of Thomas B. Lemann

on view starting February 28th, 2026

France’s royal porcelain factory at Sèvres, on the outskirts of Paris, has for nearly 300 years produced both decorative and useful ceramic objects of exemplary craft. Creating vases, tea sets, plates, and bowls that signified wealth, power and opulence to the eighteenth-century French court at Versailles, Sèvres factory artists worked alongside chemists and the best sculptors of the Rococo era to produce fine porcelain with luscious glazes in a range of colors. This exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art celebrates the bequest of a superb group of Sèvres porcelain from New Orleans collector Thomas B. Lemann. Read More

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Current Exhibitions

Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity

on view through May 3rd, 2026

Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the work of American modernist, Hayward L. Oubre, Jr. (1916–2006). Born in New Orleans in 1916, Oubre became the first student to graduate with a bachelor of fine arts degree from Dillard University. Through 52 sculptures, paintings, and prints, the exhibition reveals how the artist shaped American art while working in the South, and underscores the crucial role of Black artists and art departments at HBCUs in shaping the artistic landscape of the twentieth century. Read More

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Exhibition Videos

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