Arts: August 2018

On View in the Vieuz Carré: A new collaboration elevates the profiles of several French Quarter museums.

 

Seven nonprofit museums in the French Quarter have joined forces to form the French Quarter Museum Association. This new collaboration stems from an effort to elevate history museums as a thriving and enriching part of New Orleans’ oldest and most visited neighborhood.

Participating museums are The Historic New Orleans Collection; Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses; the Beauregard-Keyes Historic House and Garden Museum; the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum; the Louisiana State Museum, which includes the Cabildo, the Presbytère, and the 1850 House; the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the US Mint (an affiliate of LSM); and the Catholic Cultural Heritage Center, which consists of the Old Ursuline Convent, St. Louis Cathedral and St. Anthony’s Garden.

The FQMA is supported by participating institutions: Friends of the Cabildo and the Louisiana Museum Foundation — nonprofit entities that support the operations of the LSM — as well as New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., Doerr Furniture and Dickie Brennan’s Tableau Restaurant.

For the rest of the tricentennial year, The Historic New Orleans Collection at 533 Royal St. is hosting the FQMA visitor center. Each institution has a dedicated alcove at the visitor center with a text panel and pictures so that anyone can learn about all of the historical offerings located within the French Quarter. A representative will be on hand to provide additional information about all of the museums, and the 13 sites that they represent, as well as special incentives. For example, visitors will be able to take a FQMA brochure, featuring a map of the participating institutions, and receive details on discounted admission or shop perks to member institutions.

The FQMA visitor center is open the public Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., through December 30. Admission is free to the visitor center; regular rates apply at each site. frenchquartermuseums.org

Sense of Place: Newcomb Art Museum has extended its current exhibition due to popular demand.

As a result of its popularity among guests, Newcomb Art Museum has extended its current exhibition — dubbed EMPIRE! — through Dec. 22. The immersive installation by Los Angeles-based artists Fallen Fruit (David Allen Burns and Austin Young) — and commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods and Pelican Bomb — celebrates the tricentennial and tells the story of New Orleans through the lens of Tulane University. The exhibition features more than 400 art pieces, artifacts and ephemera from 11 different Tulane-affiliated archives across campus. As a result, the entire museum has been transformed into one immersive artwork that explores the history of people and place in terms of cultural legacy, historical narrative and social constructs.

Newcomb Art Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. During its summer session, through Aug. 20, the museum will be open by appointment only; the museum will resume its regular hours Aug. 21. Woldenberg Art Center, Newcomb Circle, (504) 865-5328, newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu

 

No Place Like Home: An exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art examines the Crescent City’s complex past and looks into the future.

Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories, on view at NOMA through Sept. 16, brings together a group of seven contemporary art projects that focus on forgotten or marginalized histories of the city — and it’s all part of the New Orleans tricentennial celebration. Projects by artists Katrina Andry, Willie Birch, Lesley Dill, L. Kasimu Harris, Skylar Fein, The Everyday Projects and The Propeller Group each shed light on defining moments in New Orleans’ history that continue to frame art and life in the city today.

For example, artist Skylar Fein’s installation Remember the Upstairs Lounge (2008) commemorates the 1973 arson at the Upstairs Lounge, a popular gay bar in the French Quarter, while continuing the conversation about ongoing violence against LGBTQ communities. Meanwhile, The Propeller Group’s video The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music (2014) offers a powerful meditation on the cyclical nature of time and history, drawing points of connection between the cultural traditions of New Orleans’ vibrant Vietnamese community and the fantastical funeral traditions and rituals of South Vietnam. The Everyday Projects, a collective of photojournalists, brings their Pulitzer Center-sponsored curriculum to New Orleans with #EverydayNewOrleans — a project that encourages participants to use photography to share their unique perspectives on life in their neighborhoods throughout Greater New Orleans.

Exhibition-related programs include curator-and-artist-led noontime talks featuring Willie Birch, Katrina Andry, Kasimu Harris and Skylar Fein; gallery tours; artist perspectives; a lecture by Leslie Dill; an #EverydayNewOrleans round table; and Picturing Us, a five-documentary film series exploring the people and places that make New Orleans home. 1 Collins Diboll Circle, (504) 658-4100, noma.org