New Special Exhibitions

Lionel Hampton: A Centennial Celebration (Opens April 20, 2008 at 11am) More than 30 photographs and other personal items of Lionel Hampton on loan from the University of Idaho, home of Hampton's archives. This exhibition coincides with Hampton's 100th birthday and the book release of Flying Home Lionel Hampton: Celebrating 100 Years of Good Vibes, written by Stanley Crouch, foreword by Wynton Marsalis.

Roger Brown: Southern Exposure A native of Alabama, Roger Brown moved to Chicago in his early 20s, where he became part of the Chicago Imagist School. This movement blended folk art, surrealism, comic strip, advertisements and flea market finds into art. The exhibition is a life retrospective of Brown's paintings, and was organized by the Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University in Alabama.

Elliott Erwitt's South An exhibition of Elliott Erwitt's black and white photographs and short films of the American South from 1950 to the early 1990s. This will be the first exhibition of Erwitt's work to focus solely on the South and will showcase many photographs that have not previously been printed or in an exhibition.

Southern Masters: William Moreland from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art collection, this exhibition presents abstract paintings by this artist who taught at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Year Long Changing Special Exhibition
in Collaboration with Ed McGowin Name Change Project


Each month for a year, the museum will exhibit works corresponding chronologically to Ed McGowin's name change and subsequent persona. He continues to make work under the guise of all these personas except Nathan Ellis McDuff, whom, we believe, met an untimely and mysterious death.

Nicholas Gregory Nazianzen Open May 8 - 25, 2008 "Homosexual father of four who was blackmailed into amputating three fingers off his own right hand. He works as a conductor on the B.M.T.; Sees his correctly as a series of dreary round trips." Artist's Statement The relation of the frame to the painting alternates with the relation of the painting to the frame. They are interdependent and the results is sum of the parts. Note: this is the eighth installation of the twelve personas, which began with Ed McGowin (October 2007) More...

Past Exhibitions

Isaac Noel Anderson Open April 3 - 26, 2008 "Attractive, five foot two and three quarter inches. 165lb., one brown eye,one blue eye. Pecan oil heir wishes to correspond with male or female on matters of mustual interest regarding "Bally" pinball machines. A futurist convinced that technology is salvation, has done research in holography. Hopes to find a substitute for paper and canvas." Artist's Statement Inscapes are an invention to activate the volume of the large scale sculpture as a functional element. Note: this is the sixth installation of the twelve personas, which began with Alva Fost (November 2007) More...

Open Jan 3 - April 2008

Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor Silver gelatin photos by master photographer Jerry Uelsmann and digital prints by Maggie Taylor and a new body of large-scale collaborative prints More...

Jean Seidenberg Paintings drawings and sculpture from 1950's to the present, concentrating on his recent series of realistic portraits and figure studies. More...

Jose Torres Tama Series of expressionistic drawings of historically important free people of color who lived in Treme and Faubourg-Marigny Neighborhoods of New Orleans during the 19th and early 20th centuries with an interpretive essay by historian Keith Weldon Medley More...

Robert Polidori This exhibition includes 6 large-scale prints of New Orleans from his book After The Flood, Photographs by Robert Polidori, published by Editions Steidl, Gottingen, Germany. More...

Euri Ignatius Everpure Open March 6 - 30, 2008 "A cabinet maker who is generally disliked by those people who deal with him. Considered to be capable but insensitive because of the arrogance he has developed as a product of his small mind and limited vision while learning one craft extreamely well." Artist's Statement Secret information that surprises. The interiors when discovered, are intended to eliminate any formal converns related to the exterior. Note: this is the fifth installation of the twelve personas, which began with Alva Fost (November 2007) More...

Irby Benjamin Roy Opening Jan 3, 2007 "A Baptist ministerial student until age twenty-two. Became a student of landscape architecturewith a predilection for swimming pools. Irby maintains the authoritative dignity that became a studied posturein his previous occupation. Irby is unctuous, always eager to pleaseand is eager to reflect his customers desires." Artist's Statement Installations created to have the viewer speculate and elaborate on a narrative for the physical elements i the installation. Note: this is the third installation of the twelve personas, which began with Alva Fost (November 2007) More...

Art and Paradise: Self-Taught Art Selections from the Permanent Collections of Ed McGowin and Claudia DeMonte It took 25 years and thousands of road miles, mainly backroads of the Southern US, for McGowin and DeMonte to build their collection of self-taught art. Their primary goal was to meet the artists. Collecting was a byproduct and there was never a consistent theme dictating their choices. As DeMonte says, This group of works is not a survey of Outsider Art but the result of a personal quest to understand art-making. If anything, the collection demonstrates a common theme within self-taught art repetition. All of the artists in the exhibition are Southern and include Jimmy Lee Sudduth, who passed away recently at the age of 97, Mary Smith, Howard Finster and Pappy Kitchens. This is New Orleans' chance to see the collection that has toured Europe, Scandinavia and Japan.

Letters From My Father: Photographs by David Rae Morris and Letters from Willie Morris From 1976 through 1999, Willie Morris, author of North Toward Home and the youngest editor of Harper's Magazine, wrote more than a hundred letters to his son, David Rae. This long series, begun when his son was 16, talked about complex emotions Willie Morris found difficult to communicate in person. Willie Morris was born in Mississippi in 1934.

Ed McGowin: Name Change (One Artist, Twelve Personas, Thirty Five Years) with Thornton Modestus Dossett Frustrated by the art world's prescriptive requirements that artists work and careers must follow a linear trajectory, he explored a new theory in order to free himself. To demonstrate this theory McGowin changed his name legally twelve times in the District of Columbia court system. For each name he created works of art and exhibited them at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1972. For the past thirty-five years he continued to create works for the eleven names.

Lawrence Steven Orlean Open Dec 6, 2007 - Dec 30, 2007 "A premature greying Swiss orphan whose adolescent recollections from Show of Shows have resulted in his logging the hours of his life with clock like precision". Artist's Statement The book paintings use a language that is invented to relate to the images without describing them. This language is not a code but its own system. Note: this is the second installation of the twelve personas, which began with Alva Fost (November 2007) More...

Richard Sexton: Terra Incognita Recent hurricanes brought America's third coast more fully into the country's consciousness. Richard Sexton, along with many Southerners, knows the Gulf Coast intimately. The exhibition, Terra Incognita, will appeal to lovers of fine photography and particularly to those who appreciate landscapes. But most of all, it will be cherished by anyone who spent time running through the dunes or lush forests and tropical landscapes of this beautiful and sometimes stark area. Chronicle Books has just published a fine art photography book, Terra Incognita, with Sexton's photographs as the central focus of the work, including an essay by Museum Director, J. Richard Gruber, PhD. The book is available in the Museum Store.

Alva Isaiah Fost - Open Nov 1, 2007 - Dec 1 2007 "Shy, recticent, with brown straight hair, slicked back. He is tired but willing, and yet scared to death. He is constantly changing his prospects and moves from job to job. Knows a little about a lot of things". Artist's Statement This work activates the space between the surface of the transparent object and the opaque ground that is behind it. It is a literal extension of some of the visual space concerns related to modernist painting.

Transitional opening of the Patrick F. Taylor Library featured an exhibition of Alabama Iron Sculptors

Exhibition Closed October 7, 2007

About the Exhibition Works by Alabama Ironsculptors Lonnie Holley, Thornton Dial, Joe Minter, Ronald Lockett and Charlie Lucas were chosen to unveil the library. The building, which is partly renovated, is the perfect setting for the artists who use found-objects such as scrap metal, loose wire, and old computer keyboards. Many of the pieces, particularly those constructed in response to Katrina, feel as raw and unfinished as the building itself and equally as beautiful.

About the Library The Patrick F. Taylor Library is the only example of the prolific and legendary architectural work by native son Henry Hobson Richardson in the South. Heading the neo-romanesque movement of the 1870s and 80s, Richardson created a distinct style that bears his name. Examples of Richardsonian architecture can be found across the US, many of which are libraries. He is one of the few architects to be accepted by modernists for his rational approach to design and construction, the Patrick F. Taylor library represents his vision as a bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Hunt Slonem: Artist and Collector This major exhibition offers a glimpse into this famous painter's life including his two Louisiana plantations and his New York loft and studio. For those who have followed Hunt Slonem's career and much has been reported the exhibition will be familiar as well as new. The Ogden will create an environmental installation inspired by Slonem's homes and studios, including a comprehensive range of his paintings (some in vintage frames) and selected highlights of his collection of American antiques, unique objects, and historic artifacts. Even his specially formulated wall colors will be incorporated into the museum space. As Curator, David Houston said, "In true Hunt Slonem style, too much is not enough for this exhibition."

Southern Masters Series: Robert Warrens This exhibition, one in an on-going series of The Ogden Museum's career overviews mounted in four galleries, reflects the phases of the artist's evolution. It will be centered on a body of post-Katrina exuberant paintings of the Lakeview neighborhood, and complimented by a range of earlier, well known narrative paintings.

Portraits of Southern Artists: Photography of Jerry Seigel Atlanta-based photographer Jerry Seigel has devoted 13 years to creating this large body of portraits of Southern artists. Travelling across the South, he has photographed a wide range of artists, including many featured in the Ogden's Permanent Collection, such as Enrique Alferez, William Christenberry, William Dunlap, Ida Kohlmeyer and New Orleans sculptor, Lin Emery. This exhibition chronicles three generations of many of the most important artists whose work has come to define the genre.

More past exhibitions...