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.

• 5 – 8 pm: Art on the Spot family activity table 
• 5:30 – 7 pm: Music by Seva Venet
• 7 – 8:30 pm: Music by Opera Créole
• 6 pm: Gallery talk and book signing with Diane Waggoner and Russell Lord at the opening of East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography 

ABOUT SEVA VENET

A purveyor and preserver of the string band tradition, guitarist and banjoist Seva Venet has performed with dozens of New Orleans jazz and string musicians since moving to the city from Los Angeles in 1999. While in California, he played in a wide range of groups, including traditional jazz, Cajun and zydeco, country and western, blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and he brought that experience and versatility with him to New Orleans. He also has taught music to hundreds of students in the area since Hurricane Katrina, and he puts on many educational workshops and symposiums to promote jazz and string bands.

ABOUT OPERA CRÉOLE

Opera and classical music in New Orleans and around the world have always included the contributions of persons of color. Since the 19th Century, Creoles of New Orleans have made contributions to the music and culture of New Orleans. It is their participation in opera, as well as the music of Africa, Spain, and Haiti that contributed to the birth of jazz. This non-profit company is dedicated to researching and performing lost or rarely performed music, and sharing with the community the contributions of our people to this musical art form, in New Orleans, and around the world.

ABOUT DIANE WAGGONER AND RUSSELL LORD

Dianne Waggoner and Russell Lord co-authored the exhibition catalogue East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography.

Diane Waggoner is curator of 19th-century photographs in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She received her PhD in art history from Yale University. She previously held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery and The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Since joining the department of photographs at the National Gallery in 2004, she has co-curated Photographic Discoveries: Recent Acquisitions (2006); The Streets of New York: American Photographs from the Collection, 1938-1958 (2006); The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson (2007); and In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes Before the Digital Age (2009). The Art of the American Snapshot exhibition catalog was the 2008 winner of the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for museum scholarship. She curated The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848-1875 (2010) and collaborated with Tate Britain on Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900 (2013). 

Russell Lord is the Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at NOMA, a role he assumed in 2011. He began his career as Curatorial Assistant in the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department at the Yale University Art Gallery. During his course work at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, Lord also served as Gallery Director at New York’s Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Fine Photographs.While completing his two-­year fellowship, from 2009 through 2011, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lord continued work on his doctoral dissertation, “Hybridity and Reproduction in Early Photography.” His dissertation establishes a broader history of photography that considers the role of viewing experience, public reception, and photography’s relationship to other pictorial formsLord recently organized a show of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Photography: Intersections that explored photography’s relationship to other visual media. He also recreated Alfred Stieglitz’s Little Galleries of the Photo Secession from 1905 for Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs at the 2009 Winter Antiques Show in New York.

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.