Welcome to The Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Located in the cultural heart of the South, New Orleans, the museum is home to the largest and most comprehensive collection of Southern art in the world, and a unique and innovative destination to "See the South." The Ogden Museum is dedicated to the rebuilding of the culture, landscape and communities of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast region and those areas effected by the hurricanes of 2005.


New Special Exhibitions
Opening April - mid July 2008

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...

Continuing Special Exhibitions:

James Surls, Lin Emery, Jesus Morales and various works from self-taught artists in the Museum's Permanent Collection

James Surls; 1st installation of the Sculpture for New Olreans project For more than 30 years, James Surls has redefined -- or in fact, created his own dialogue between the natural world and his art. His sculpture installed in the plaza of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, "Me, Knife, Diamond and Flower," produced in 2000, is cast bronze and stainless steel. The Surls sculpture was the first one installed (Feb. 8, 2008) as part of the Sculpture for New Orleans (www.sculptureforneworleans.org) project.

New Aquisitions: Lin Emery and Jesus Morales from the Pat and Denver Gray Collection Highlights new aquisitions to the Museum's permenant collection made by a donation from the Gray Collection.

George Ohr Pottery From the collections of Robert Tannen and Jeanne Nathan and Roger Houston Ogden. Self-proclaimed as "The Mad Potter of Biloxi," George Ohr is nationally recognized as one of America's greatest art potters. This exhibition features a range of early red clay vessels, to his later works, such as his signature pinched vessels. The works from Tannen and Nathan are paired with vessels from the Roger H. Ogden Collection forming a small survey of Ohr's work from 1886 to 1915.