Many artworks have been created within the context of resistance, and nowhere has this been vividly captured than in a painting by the Nigerian artist, Demas Nwoko (b. 1935), one of the artists featured in Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Though not currently on view in the exhibition, Nwoko’s Nigeria in 1959 was painted within the context of the dawn of independence and nationhood of Nigeria in 1960. Read More

A powerful new voice in contemporary craft, Joyce Lin makes work that is both conceptual and beautifully crafted. For her Ghostwood Chair and Table, commissioned by NOMA, Lin collected driftwood nearby in Louisiana’s Bayou Bienvenue Wetlands. The work’s title references a “ghost forest,” the geographical term for marshes where salty water has encroached into once-verdant swamp forests, leaving a landscape of poisoned trees. Read More

Over three decades, renowned photographer Robert Polidori has photographed Versailles. Together, the pictures document the transformation of the complex from a decadent symbol of imperial grandeur to a modern museum, whose architecture and contents are almost impossible to maintain. In these images we witness what Polidori once called “society’s superego,” an attempt to reconstruct the past according to our own contemporary worldview. His photographs probingly peel back the various layers of history, framing the building and its contents as something very much in the making. Read More

NOMA’s exhibition Katherine Choy: Radical Potter in 1950s New Orleans primarily examines distinctive pots made by Katherine Choy, a national leader in evolving ceramics from utilitarian objects into the purview of expressive fine art. While Choy’s radical work in pottery and her founding of the Clay Art Center in New York will be the lasting legacy of her short career, the artist also made award-winning enamels and had an active career in textile design.  Read More