Must-See Museum Exhibits in New Orleans This October

With so much to do in New Orleans, don’t forget that the city’s art scene is just as vibrant as the food and music. Fall brings exciting exhibits at various museums. Check out the highlighted exhibits below and search our calendar to find even more art in New Orleans. 

“Baldwin Lee” 

Opening October 5, 2024 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the exhibition “Baldwin Lee” will feature a selection of over 50 gelatin silver prints culled from thousands of images Lee made across the South in the 1980s. Many of these photographs will be exhibited for the first time. The exhibition will include compelling portraits of Black Americans, as well as a collection of landscape, cityscape, and still-life images that visually encapsulate the Reagan-era American South. See the exhibit through February 16, 2025. 

“Envisioning Japan: Transformational Gifts from Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter” 

In early 2024, Kurt Gitter and Alice Yelen Gitter gifted over fifty works of Japanese art to the New Orleans Museum of Art. This remarkable donation includes major works by Edo-period painters (1615-1868), as well as significant works of ceramic art from the late 20th century to the present day. Selected works include ink and color on paper, ink on paper, and stoneware with ash glaze. See the exhibit from May 10 - October 27, 2024. 

“Unknown Sitters” 

Closing on October 6, “Unknown Sitters” displays portraits from The Historic New Orleans Collection’s holdings of people who are unidentified in the historical record. The sitters’ identities were lost or erased from history for a variety of reasons. When family estates were sold, beloved portraits were divorced from their historical narratives. Sometimes artists did not record the name of sitters, particularly when the sitter was a paid model. These portraits of mystery stand in for the lives not represented in history and ask us all to remember—and to imagine.