With so much to do in New Orleans, many forget that the city’s art scene is just as vibrant as the food and music. As summer winds down, make visiting museums a part of your end-of-summer bucket list. Check out the highlighted exhibits below and search our calendar to find even more art in New Orleans. 

11th Annual HBCU Art Showcase

On view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art from May 29 - September 29, the 11th Annual HBCU Art Showcase Presented by The New Orleans Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, spotlights student artists at Dillard University and Xavier University of Louisiana. Featuring paintings, metal casting, ceramics, and mixed media, this exhibit provides a platform for young students of color to share their voice and offer commentary on the impactful times in which we all live.   

“Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art" 

“Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art” looks at the more than 4,000-year history of glass around the world and how it intersects with scientific discoveries, foodways, and artistic innovations. Selected works include ceramics, pottery, glassware, furniture, and even a chandelier. See it at NOMA from August 30, 2024 - February 10, 2025. 

“Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture”   

On view at the Contemporary Arts Center and in partnership with SEEING BLACK, “Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture” is an exercise in the unconventional and the splendid—bringing attention to the ways that contemporary photographers wield the visual power of the camera to discern, behold, celebrate, and document people, places, events, collective memories, encounters, and other ever-present moments of Blackness that refuse erasure. Curated by Shana M. Griffin, Gestures of Refusal features five immersive installations and over 180 photographs and objects covering a spectrum of narrative styles, compositions, techniques, and approaches, showcasing the photographs of nearly one hundred contemporary Black photographers with ties to New Orleans from the 1950s to the present. The exhibit is currently on view and closes on September 15. 

“Southland”  

"Southland" examines the role photographs have played in the visualization of the natural landscape of the American South. The exhibition explores the technical and aesthetic methods photographers have used in approaching the Southern Landscape. Highlighting the marshlands in Louisiana, the beaches of Florida, the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta and the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, the exhibition shows the landscape of the American South is as diverse as the people of the region. See “Southland” at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art now until September 22.