New Orleans Museum of Art

The museum is open Tuesday - Sunday 10am - 5pm. The Besthoff Sculpture Garden is open 10am - 6pm seven days a week.

Louisiana's culture often seems to have sprung from its fertile soil. Out of the rich Louisiana sugar fields, New Orleans received a gift of lasting culture in early 1910, when sugar broker Isaac Delgado offered the city $150,000 to build a “temple of art for rich and poor alike” in City Park. The neo-classical, Beaux Arts-style Isaac Delgado Museum of Art opened in December 1911, but sadly, Delgado was too ill to attend. He died weeks later, and left yet another generous gift, an art collection gathered by his late aunt. Delgado’s 25,000-square-foot “temple” is still at the center of the now much larger New Orleans Museum of Art.

The Museum's collection includes more than 40,000 objects, spanning 5,000 years of art and is noted for its extraordinary strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, and African and Japanese works, and it continues to expand and grow. Examples of the collection include: European painting and sculpture from the 16th through 20th centuries; American painting and sculpture from the 18th and 19th centuries; European and American prints and drawings; Asian, African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian, and Native American art; photography; and European and American decorative arts. NOMA’s Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden has become the latest cultural destination for locals and a must-see for visitors to the Crescent City. The world-class collection of more than 90 modern and contemporary sculptures is presented in an incredible, eleven-acre natural setting with delights at every turn.

The Museum ranks among the top 25 percent of the nation’s largest and most significant museums, and is the premier art museum in the Gulf South region. Hundreds of thousands of visitors have passed through its doors to see landmark international exhibitions.

NOMA provides an opulent setting for private events, meetings, film screenings, corporate entertaining, lectures, seated dinners, receptions, weddings, and more.

Museum members and students of member universities are allowed to use general research materials - auction catalogues and artist files, for example - in the Felix J. Dreyfous Research Library. Other interested researchers may make appointments to view some of the library’s non-circulating 30,000 volumes.

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