The exhibit “New Orleans Musicians in Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection” is on view at the Historic New Orleans Collection through May 16, 2027. Admission is free.
The exhibit’s 14 pieces, assembled from HNOC’s permanent holdings, focus primarily on traditional New Orleans jazz musicians, some captured decades ago. There are outliers in the show, which Jason Wiese and I discuss in a new episode of the Museumgoer Podcast here.
Jason is the Collection’s chief curator and curated the exhibit, which features a soundtrack of selections created by people depicted on the walls.
“I thought that it would be strange to be in an exhibit showing jazz musicians without any sound at all,” Wiese said in my December 22 story about the exhibit for the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate (read it here). “It was important to be able to hear the music that they created.”
For anyone familiar with HNOC’s holdings, there’s an “extra” to look for in Andrew LaMar Hopkins’s 2018 painting “French Quarter Banjo Player or Self-Portrait of the Artist with Belle.” “He styles himself as a 19th-century banjo player, a minstrel banjo player, with a little dog,” Wiese said. “In the composition of the painting is another painting that’s actually from our collection, Jacques Amans’ ‘Creole in a Red Headdress.’”
Images (provided courtesy of HNOC) accompanying the story and podcast are below.
