Facing the greenery of City Park, the majestic Spirit Gates at NOMA stand as a testament to centuries of artistic achievement by Black artists in New Orleans. While the gates poetically celebrate the city’s jazz traditions and ironwork craft, in this artwork John T. Scott also addressed a history of racial segregation in the City Park, and by extension, the New Orleans Museum of Art. Read More

On September 3, 1916, Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson of the Royal Air Force was on night patrol in his biplane, when he spotted the wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz airship outside of London. It was one of sixteen that had launched from Germany for the largest air raid over England. Robinson first lost the airship in the clouds, but found it again and made three attack runs on it. During the third, the airship burst into flames and crashed into a field. Read More

This month, Ida Kohlmeyer’s painted aluminum sculpture Rebus 3D-89-3 returns to the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, newly refreshed from structural repairs and brandishing a brand new coat of paint. The expert restoration—undertaken by Kohlmeyer’s longtime fabricator G. Paul Lucas of Lucas Limited in Louisburg, Kansas—brings the work back to its intended brilliancy and allows us to appreciate the work of one of Louisiana’s most influential and enigmatic abstract artists anew. Read More

Gordon Parks famously stated that photography was his “choice of weapons” against racism, intolerance, and poverty. While photographs have certainly been used to document and advance social justice causes in the past, the use of photography in recent protest movements has demonstrated one of the dangers of the medium. While protest photographs have amplified these movements’ messages and visibility, those very same photographs have been used against their makers by other authorities. Read More

In 2002, the Vållö watering can’s designer, Monika Mulder, was asked to solve a clunky logistics issue. Her result is a graceful work of art. The challenge was that a standard watering can’s handle, pouring spout, and cavity take up a large volume of space. For IKEA, a company organized around the principle of using thoughtful design to address shipping efficiency in furniture, this excess volume was a big deal. The design request was for a watering can that could be stacked, one within another, which saved tremendously on international transportation costs. Read More