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NOMA Ogden Museum of Southern Art

New Orleans, LA


Ogden Museum of Southern Art
925 Camp Street
New Orleans, La. 70130
504/539-9600 phone
504/539-9602 fax
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info@ogdenmuseum.org


www.ogdenmuseum.org

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Exhibitions:

Southern Contemporary Selections from the Permanent Collection

NOCCA PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE A 50th Anniversary Exhibition

Southern Abstraction Works from the Permanent Collection

Artists and Sense of Place Residency Stories from New Orleans East: The Shape of a New Day

Events


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Southern Contemporary Selections from the Permanent Collection
March 4 - October 13, 2024

The Contemporary South is an exhibition that brings together thirteen works of art created in the past twenty years by artists working in the American South, encouraging a dynamic conversation between the excitement of recent acquisitions and the familiarity of permanent collection highlights. Emerging artistic expressions across a variety of mediums and techniques are included alongside artworks by mid-career and established artists.

This selection of works from the permanent collection of Ogden Museum of Southern Art (some on view for the first time) considers the many ways artists throughout the region explore process, place and identity through their creative practices. Contemporary experiences of place and identity in the American South are myriad, situational and decidedly in flux. Whether examining the past, critiquing the present or looking to the future – these 21st century artists bring unique approaches and contemporary goals to the dialogue around Southern art and culture.

NOCCA PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE A 50th Anniversary Exhibition
March 9 - April 21, 2024

The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts — better known as NOCCA — is one of America’s leading arts high schools. Founded in 1973, NOCCA is partially a product of 1960s politics like the passing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts (both in 1965). However, its existence is more properly due to the perseverance of local artists and educators who believed that NOCCA was needed to help preserve and promote New Orleans’ unique culture.

When NOCCA opened its doors on January 28, 1974, it was a half-day program, offering classes in three disciplines: Music, Theatre and Visual Arts. Over the past 50 years, however, NOCCA has evolved to include 11 different arts departments and a groundbreaking degree-granting academic program. Students come from across the region and are admitted based solely on their audition. There is no tuition. Notable NOCCA alumni include Jon Batiste, Harry Connick Jr., Wynton Marsalis, Wendell Pierce and many of the visual artists featured in this exhibition.

NOCCA PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE includes works from Ogden Museum’s permanent collection; the private collection of the Museum’s founder, Roger Ogden; works purchased by the NOCCA Foundation, NOCCA’s nonprofit partner; and pieces by current and past NOCCA faculty.

The artists included here all reflect NOCCA’s pedagogical model, which is rooted in the time-honored master-apprentice tradition. At NOCCA, professional artists pass on their lifetimes of experience to the future generations, who frequently become professional artists themselves and continue the process.

Southern Abstraction Works from the Permanent Collection
March 4 - October 13, 2024

The art of the American South has never existed in a vacuum. It has – since the earliest moments of the American experience – run concurrent with dominant academic art movements and popular trends, while maintaining a distinct regional identity. This exhibition traces the development of Southern Art through examples by leading figures working in the visual language of abstraction.

In the early 1940s, American Art took a new direction thanks to the innovation of loosely affiliated group of artists in New York City – the group of artist we now call the Abstract Expressionists, also known as the New York School. During and in the wake of World War II, as the US was forging a new direction for American life, these artists working in the language of abstraction were the vanguard of a new direction in art, a uniquely American style of art that would shift the avant-garde dialogue away from Europe. Through formal innovation and a focus on surface and process, this new style escaped adherence to realistic depictions of the outer world, seeking instead to convey the artist’s inner world. In the spirit of American individualism, these artists sought to create as a pure expression of self.

Abstract Expressionism was heavily influenced by another uniquely American musical form that had arisen from New Orleans a generation before – Jazz. These painters embraced Jazz as a guide to creation through improvisation, lyricism and spontaneity. Perhaps most importantly, these artists sought to reinvent the world with their paintings. Many had suffered through the Great Depression and witnessed the horrors of World War II. This new direction in art sought to explore the human psyche in pursuit of essential truth and to create a new direction in American culture, as well. Theirs was a mission of rebirth, innovation and hope.

The artists of the New York School came from diverse places. Some were Europeans seeking refuge from war. Some came from the Midwest, seeking work in the wake of the Great Depression. Some were native New Yorkers. Of course, there were Southerners involved from the beginning of the movement. New Orleans’ Fritz Bultman was a major figure in the first generation of AbEx artists. He studied under influential German-born American painter, Hans Hofmann, and was a member of the Irascibles, a group of artists who penned an open letter to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, condemning the institution for ignoring a new American art movement. Another New Orleans artist, Ida Kohlmeyer, also made her way to the circle of Hans Hofmann. In New York, Hofmann persuaded Kohlmeyer to abandon realism in favor of abstraction. Kohlmeyer also met Mark Rothko, a leading figure in the New York School who was teaching in New Orleans, and whose influence would help move her work toward something wholly original in the history of American abstraction. Rothko also befriended and influenced New Orleans painter, Kendall Shaw. Shaw studied under Rothko during Rothko’s tenure as visiting instructor at Tulane University. Returning to New York, Shaw established himself first as an AbEx painter, then a founding member of the Pattern & Decoration movement. Mississippi’s Dusti Bongé had the rare privilege of being a part of the New York School, while living and working on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Beginning in 1939, Bongé showed her work regularly in New York City, most importantly at Betty Parsons Gallery, whose pioneering roster included some of the leading figures of the movement. Other artists from the South who participated in the New York School include Beauford Delaney from Tennessee, Jack Stewart from Georgia and Merton Simpson from South Carolina, among others.

Initially, the American South was less than receptive to the new movement of American art toward abstraction. But as Southern artists gained more access to education, both at home and afield, through the G.I. Bill, they were exposed to and trained in the dominant contemporary style of painting. Returning home, they brought more acceptance for abstract art to the South. Expanded funding for education by the federal government in the 1950s and 60s also played a role, bringing artists from Northern industrial cities into Southern art programs. Melville Price was one of the youngest of the first generation Abstract Expressionist circle of painters before moving to Tuscaloosa to teach at the University of Alabama. Tulane University’s art department – led by New Yorker Pat Trivigno – established an active visiting professor program, bringing established artists including Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still to New Orleans. Seymour Fogel – a leading figure in the New York scene and apprentice to Diego Rivera — moved to Austin, Texas in 1946 for a teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin. Thereafter, that University took the lead in the development of a Texas Modernist movement. As abstraction took foothold in the academic setting, appreciation for the style grew in the popular mind across the South. As new voices arrived in the South, others left for the larger Northern cities. Some artists stayed in the South, though, forging their own path. Three such artists were Bess Dawson, Ruth Atkinson Holmes and Halcyone Barnes. These women embraced abstraction in their studio practice beginning in 1951 in rural Summit, Mississippi. Showing together for the next three decades as The Summit Group, these rural artists exhibited in major museums across the Gulf South.

The dialogue of American Art is never stagnant, and while abstraction dominated the conversation for decades, it began to evolve in new directions. Abstract Expressionism led the way for a myriad of new movements including Post-Painterly Abstraction, Minimalism, Pattern & Decoration and Lyrical Abstraction, among others. Artists from the American South were involved with each evolution. Beginning in the 1950s, a group of mostly Southern artists in Washington, D.C., including Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, established the Washington Color School of painters, a group that was central to the larger Color Field movement in American Art. Eugene Martin developed his practice in this scene before relocating to Lafayette, Louisiana. Perhaps no other artist of the Washington Color School was more influential than Mississippi-born Sam Gilliam. Arising as a great innovator, his large unstretched Drape paintings not only challenged the traditions of his medium, but also the very spaces in which they were seen.

In the past few decades, abstraction has ceded ground to more figurative art in the contemporary dialogue. Yet abstraction is still very much alive, and relevant, as is evident in this exhibition. Artists such as John T. Scott, Ed McGowin, Clyde Connell and George Dunbar engaged in significant material exploration and meditations on regional identity with their work from the second half of the 20th century. Contemporary artists such as Shawne Major, Kevin Cole, John Barnes, William Monaghan and Sherry Owens continue to push conversation around abstraction into new territory with their work.

From early innovators in oil to the contemporary vanguard of material exploration, this exhibition traces Southern abstract artists’ impact upon a critically important movement – widely considered to be America’s most significant contribution to art history. By including both 20th century and contemporary artists, academically trained and self-taught – this exhibition considers the legacy of Modernism in the American South.

Bradley Sumrall
Curator of the Collection

Artists and Sense of Place Residency Stories from New Orleans East: The Shape of a New Day
Through April 1, 2024

Planned by Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s Learning and Engagement Department, this exhibition features artist Rontherin Ratliff in collaboration with 4th and 5th grade students from ReNEW Dolores T. Aaron Academy.

Artist Rontherin Ratliff spent two weeks with 4th and 5th graders from ReNEW Dolores T. Aaron Academy this fall. During the residency, students recounted personal experiences that were incorporated into their artwork. Ratliff facilitated story time using “More Than One Story,” a card deck with multilingual story prompts designed to build empathy across age and language. Each student (paired with a classmate), took turns telling their story and listening to their partner. After sharing stories, students chose a color, shape, number and feeling that was representative of their story. These attributes were then used to inform elements of their art making.

Next, Rontherin Ratliff explored the theme “sense of place” with students through sculpture. Ratliff presented plans for an abstracted sunrise sculpture set to be installed on Bullard Ave. in New Orleans East. Students worked collaboratively with Ratliff to construct a mixed media sculpture referencing the public sculpture. Students started the project by tracing each other’s hands and cutting them out from cardboard. Selecting from a range of media, students finished their sculptures with the colors, textures, shapes and numbers that were reflected in their stories. Ratliff incorporated students’ cardboard and multi colored hands into the larger installation.

The heart mission of Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s mission is the goal to provide educational opportunities for in-depth exploration of the visual arts and culture of the American South. Since 2001, the Learning and Engagement Department has organized artist-in-residence programs, pairing Southern artists with local schools. Working with elementary school students in the medium of the artist’s choice, the artist spends multiple weeks exploring the influence of geography and sense of place. Upon completion of the residency, the students visit the Museum to view their finished artwork installed in the Education Gallery.

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