Friday Nights at NOMA opens the museum’s doors for many interesting activities throughout the year: live music, movies, children’s activities, and more. Regular admission prices apply—NOMA members are FREE—but there is no extra charge for programs or films. All galleries, Café NOMA, and the Museum Shop remain open till 9 pm.

• 5 – 8 pm: Art on the Spot family activity table
• 5:30 – 6:45 pm: Music by pianist Nolan Tecklenburg
• 6:30 pm: Fashion on Film Series: The Legacy of Alexander McQueen
• 7 pm: Opera Nouvelle presents selections from Champion: An Opera in Jazz

ABOUT OPERA NOUVELLE AND Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Terence Blanchard

Opera Nouvelle will perform selections from Champion: An Opera in Jazz in advance of its New Orleans premiere. The opera, with music by New Orleans’ jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard, is based on the life of professional boxer Emile Griffith, a three-time World Welterweight Champion and twice a World Middleweight Champion who fought from the late 1950s into the 1970s. One of Griffith’s greatest professional triumphs—winning back the Welterweight Championship from Benny “The Kid” Paret in 1962—was also one of his greatest personal tragedies. The seventeen punches he landed on Paret in seven seconds resulted in not only a knockout, but also a coma from which Paret would never recover. Paret would die ten days later.

Before that life-changing televised fight, in a room full of press and officials, Paret mocked Griffith repeatedly with a derogatory term for homosexual. Years later, Griffith’s sexuality as a gay man was revealed to the public after he was nearly killed by a gang outside a gay bar in New York. “I kill a man,” Griffith was quoted to have said, “and most people understand and forgive me. I love a man, and to so many people this is an unforgivable sin.” In an inspiring, moving, and painful journey of self-discovery, Champion presents audiences with a great contemporary tragic hero—a man of strength and courage consumed ultimately by rage, regret, and the terrible consequences of his actions.

ABOUT FASHION ON FILM: THE LEGACY OF ALEXANDER McQUEEN

In conjunction with A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes, NOMA will screen five documentaries related to the fashion industry. Alexander McQueen (1969–2010) is among the designers represented in the exhibition. The Legacy of Alexander McQueen, directed by Loïc Print,  chronicles the last four collections before McQueen’s suicide in 2010. Through footage of his spectacular and provocative shows, never-before-seen interviews of his mother and his relatives, the documentary sheds light on the stunning world and the inspirations/obsessions of the world-renowned designer. (2015 | 53 minutes | Watch the trailer)

Friday Nights at NOMA is supported in part by grant funds from the Azby Fund; Ruby K. Worner Charitable Trust; New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation; and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Arts Council of New Orleans.