In two complementary exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, works by James Hoff and Jacqueline Humphries incorporated the language of computer programming and other digital technologies while remaining loyal to the tradition of painterly abstraction. Humphries’s…
I was suspicious at first. Taxidermy has become so trendy that it’s been satirized on the TV show Portlandia, where this past season the conflagration of the Dead Pets store led to a dramatic trial of the weirdo characters. Apparently the trend even has a name: rogue taxidermy. Artist Kate…
KAWS’s monumental Companion stands outside the Newcomb Art Museum on the campus of Tulane University, covering its eyes. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The blinded figure refers to the Japanese proverb of the three wise…
The new book Artist Spaces: New Orleans, a collaboration between photographer Tina Freeman and author Morgan Molthrop provides a glimpse into the diverse and robust contemporary art scene of New Orleans. The book is the end result of Freeman’s…
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is home to a broad selection of art from across the region, but it also maintains a strong relationship with artists and themes important in its hometown of New Orleans. So with the…
Upon first seeing the banner image for the New Orleans Museum of Art’s current exhibition, “Ten Years Gone,” you might assume that you’re looking at the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This summer is the 10-year anniversary…
There’s just something about watching children express wonder. On this hot Friday, I’m watching a few kids run around the Music Box Roving Village as if it is a playground. Rain is due to fall at any moment, according…
If you thought that an exhibition about Carnival and contemporary art would be fun, well, you might be wrong. “En Mas’” is definitely about Carnival, yet it fails to razzle and dazzle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The…
At first, Stephen Collier’s show, “The Pigeons in This Town Taste Like Shit,” looks like the worst kind of drug-addled sarcastic gallery show you might see on the Lower East Side, but here, in New Orleans, it works. Context…
Prospect.3 curator Franklin Sirmans has put forth the exhibition’s theme in the question: how does one get to know the other? The implicit answer is: through art. Gauguin and Brazilian modernist Tarsila do Amaral are his historical touchstones for…
I’m a sucker for a good video. I’ve always loved both art and music, so when you put the two together in the form of a video, I’m in. I love the way Paul Thomas Anderson—director of 1997’s Boogie…
At first, everyone was taken aback. A woman dressed in a suit was standing at the lectern, and she was asking someone in the back of the auditorium at the New Orleans Museum of Art to quiet down. It’s…
The third incarnation of the New Orleans international art biennial “Prospect.3: Notes for Now,” curated by Franklin Sirmans of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was framed in part by the 1961 novel The Moviegoer by Louisiana author…
In his exhibition “An Imperfect Force” at Antenna Gallery, R. Eric McMaster—the winner of Press Street’s 2014 Open Call—explores the systems that govern various sports by manipulating their rules and forms. McMaster’s show centers on a video installation, The…
When the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) announced its exhibition “Mark of the Feminine,” a colleague asked what I thought of the show’s concept. His tone was somewhat sly, as if he was predicting—as it turned out, correctly—how I would…
At last year’s Creative Time Summit, Mel Chin moderated a conversation on sustainability, “Accessing the Green City.” In his introduction, Chin cracked a few jokes, slipped in a mention his upcoming retrospective in New Orleans, and explained his practice…
Stephen Paul Day’s show at Arthur Roger Gallery closes this week.
Benjamin Morris explores Isabelle Hayeur’s recent New Orleans billboard project, Underworlds, produced during her A Studio In The Woods residency.
