Ogden Museum

Current Exhibitions

On view through May 19, 2013

Provocations: Tulane School of Architecture Thesis Projects 2013

Special opening reception in the Ogden Museum's historic Patrick F. Taylor Library on May 10, 5 pm-8 pm with reception, then featured speakers:

• George Baird, former Dean, John H. Daniels Faculty of Achitecture, Landscape and Design, Univeristy of Toronto; Founding Principal, Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, Toronto
• Brigitte Shim, Associate Profession, John H. Daneils Faculty School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto; Principal, Shim-Sutcliffe Artchitects, Toronto

Hosted by Kenneth Schwartz, AIA, Favrot Professor and Dean, Tulane School of Architecture

Free and open to the public.

For more information, call 504.314.2361

On view through June 30, 2013

What Becomes a Legend Most?: The Blackglama Photographs from the Collection of Peter Rogers

Liza, Natalie, Pavarotti, Ray, Audrey: Stars from another era that need only be known by one name. It was these women and men who graced the pages of magazines and billboards through the 1970s to the early 1990s in the Blackglama fur ads, “What Becomes a Legend Most?”.

More than 60 black-and-white photographs from this ad campaign are on view in the exhibition: What Becomes a Legend Most?: The Blackglama Photographs from the Collection of Peter Rogers. The photographs showcased in the exhibition are from the heyday of the campaign, 1968 to 1993. Photographs feature a stellar lineup: opera singer Leontyne Price and musician Ray Charles to actors Shirley MacLaine and Rosalind Russell.

Special Thanks to Stephanie and Robin Durant

On view through July 14, 2013

To Paint and Pray:
The Art and Life of William R. Hollingsworth, Jr.

William Robert Hollingsworth, Jr., who lived from 1910 to 1944, remains one of Mississippi’s most significant artists. Organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art, To Paint and Pray explores Hollingsworth’s life, from his school years at Jackson’s Davis Elementary and Central High School, through college at University of Mississippi and the Art Institute of Chicago, to his adulthood in his hometown as an artist. William Hollingsworth was prolific in his work, capturing the landscapes and people of central Mississippi in watercolors and oil. During his lifetime, the artist received numerous national awards for his art and exhibited across the country, from San Diego to Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Atlanta, and New York, to name a few. Working at the time of the great regionalists Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood, Hollingsworth exhibited alongside those masters, and was building a name for himself nationally at the time of his death. Pulled primarily from the Museum’s extensive collection of his work, along with loans from other public and private collections, this exhibition fully explores the life and work of this Mississippi artist.

To Paint and Pray is sponsored by

Eudora Welty: Photographs from the 1930s and '40s

Eudora Welty is one of America's most celebrated and beloved authors. Before gaining fame through her writing, she was an aspiring photographer whose photographs from the 1930s and ‘40s have since become modern day classics. This exhibition, with support from the Eudora Welty Foundation, focuses on Welty's most productive period as a photographer and features a large selection of vintage prints from the collection of the Welty family.

During the Great Depression, Eudora Welty worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration. She traveled extensively throughout Mississippi, writing articles on the daily lives and conditions of the people. While on assignment, she took her camera along, applying her narrative eye photographing the people, places, and events around her. Welty referred to these photographs as “snapshots” because of the spontaneity in which they were made. A selection of photographs from this era created in New York City and New Orleans are also included in the exhibition.

Walter Inglis Anderson: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Walter Anderson was born in 1903 in New Orleans, La. He was a painter, potter, writer and naturalist who spent most of his life working in or around his family's business, Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, Miss. A small, undisturbed barrier island, Horn Island, became his refuge and main inspiration. This exhibition will showcase works from the Ogden Museum’s permanent collection, as well as those from the Wesley and Norman Galen Collection.

Southern Regionalists from the Permanent Collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art

This exhibition showcases the diversity of artists who reflected the changing times of the American South in the 1930s - 1950s. Artists included: Katherine Blackshear, Archie Bong?, Christopher Clark, Alberta Collier, Otis Dozier, Caroline Durieux, John Kelly Fitzpatrick, Campbell Gillis, Robert Gwathmey, Marie Atkinson Hull, Edmund Daniel Kitzinger, Florence McClung, John McCrady and Richard Wilt. Ongoing exhibition.

On view through July 21, 2013

When You're Lost, Everything's a Sign: Self-Taught Art from The House of Blues Collection

From its inception in 1992, House of Blues has maintained a deep commitment to the preservation of both American Blues music and American folk art. For 20 years, House of Blues has collected and showcased some of the finest examples of Southern vernacular art, linking it with American vernacular music traditions. Artists represented will include Leroy Almon, Roy Ferdinand, Reverend Howard Finster, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Sybil Gibson, Mr. Imagination, and many others, both known and unknown.

On Going Exhibitions

George Rodrigue's "Aioli Dinner" (1971)

George Rodrigue's Aioli Dinner (1971), which is on loan to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. The oil-on-canvas painting, the first he did with people, was based on photographs of a gourmet dinner club, the Creole Gourmet Society.

Thornton Dial's "Struggling Tiger in Hard Times"

A self-taught artist born in Alabama, Dial has been called an artist of "uncommon power and perception." This multi-media piece consists of oil, rope carpet, tin, carpet, and industrial sealing compound on canvas mounted on wood. Its central symbol is the tiger, which Dial uses to represent the African-American male, as he encounters life.

"Struggling Tiger in Hard Times is a significant work from Dial’s Tiger series, representing not only Dial’s personal struggle in life, but the larger black struggle in the context of American history," says Curator Bradley Sumrall. "As Amiri Baraka says in his essay Proud Stepping Tiger: History as Struggle in the Work of Thornton Dial, ‘More generally, the tiger represents the whole African Diaspora, and, even more generally, it is any being who is struggling.’"

"We are celebrating the most significant gift of a single work of art to the self-taught collection since the founding of the museum," says Director William Andrews. "We are thrilled that Calynne and Lou Hill have decided to share their passion by placing this painting with the Ogden." Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial, lauded by the New York Times and Time Magazine, is an exhibition organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art currently on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art through May 20, 2012.

Calynne and Lou Hill have generously donated this important piece by Dial to the Ogden Museum.

Will Henry Stevens Gallery

Artist and teacher Will Henry Stevens is one of the pioneers of modernism in the American South. Surrounded by streams, woodlands, trails and other extensive vistas associated with the Southern highlands, Stevens developed an intimate bond with these locations which informed his art and reflected his spiritual attitude towards nature. Though his reputation was largely regional in his lifetime, he always had a following, participating in some of the major artistic movements of his time.

Andrews - Humphrey Gallery

This exhibition features the work of two generations beginning with the partriarch George Andrews,and includes his son Benny Andrews and wife, Nene Humphrey

More about this exhibition

Walter Anderson Gallery

Walter Anderson was born in 1903 in New Orleans, La. He was a painter, potter, writer and naturalist who spent most of his life working in or around his family's business, Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, Miss. A small, undisturbed barrier island, Horn Island, became his refuge and main inspiration. Works currently on view are from the Wesley and Norman Galen Collection