Butterfly Music Series: David Torkanowsky
2025-09-14 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts
Experience part of Super Bowl LIX history and enjoy music played on Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste’s custom Yamaha piano on view at NOMA. Batiste performed his moving rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner on this instrument in the Caesars Superdome during the Super Bowl pregame show.
This series celebrates the piano’s residency at NOMA and pays homage to the musical history of New Orleans by inviting New Orleans–based musicians to offer intimate sets in NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts, which also features bas-relief murals by Enrique Alférez.
Join us for this installment of the Butterfly Music Series featuring New Orleanian jazz pianist and composer David Torkanowsky.
Attendance is included with museum admission. Preregistration for this event is recommended. Seating is limited and not guaranteed with registration.
Register Now

About David Torkanowsky
David Torkanowsky is one of New Orleans’s premier contemporary jazz pianists, composers, and arrangers. “Tork” was born in New Orleans in 1956, the son of classical conductor Werner Torkanowsky and flamenco artist Theresa Torkanowsky. He learned to play piano early on, and was schooled in the ways of New Orleans music by legends such as Danny Barker, David Lastie and Ellis Marsalis. Read more at https://www.wwoz.org/acts/david-torkanowsky
About the Work
For a limited time, NOMA visitors have the unique opportunity to see the custom piano played by acclaimed musical artist Jon Batiste during the Super Bowl LIX pregame show. On view in the museum’s Lapis Center for the Arts, the vibrant and colorful grand piano features a design by artist and bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, who is Batiste’s wife.
LEARN MORE

Gallery Talk with Curator Orlando Hernández Ying
2025-09-17 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Every week, NOMA hosts gallery talks in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden led by curators, artists, and other special guests. These lively, participatory conversations provide a moment to take a close look at one work—or a selection of works—currently on view.
This week, join Orlando Hernández Ying, NOMA’s Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas, for a gallery talk on Our Lady of Loreto in the newly-reinstalled second floor mezzanine gallery. Learn more about the upcoming Great Hall installation of grand scale Peruvian Vice-Regal paintings, opening September 30th.
This gallery talk will be offered at 12:30 and 6:00 pm the next day. The 6:00pm gallery talk will be followed by a 7:00 pm combined performance and lecture by psalterist Marc Armitano Domingo in the Lapis Center for the Arts, as part of the National Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

National Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration 2025
2025-09-17 18:00 - 21:00
Celebrate National Hispanic American Heritage Month at NOMA, featuring gallery talks from Lapis Curator of the Art of the Americas Orlando Hernández Ying and a live performance and lecture from Marc Armitano Domingo.
This program is included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. Advanced registration is recommended.
Register Now

Program Details
6:00 pm | Gallery Talk with Curator Orlando Hernández Ying
Join Orlando Hernández Ying, NOMA’s Lapis Curator of the Art of the Americas, for a Gallery Talk on Our Lady of Loreto in the newly reinstalled second floor mezzanine gallery. Learn more about the upcoming Great Hall installation of grand scale Peruvian Vice-Regal paintings, opening September 30th.
Learn More
7:00 pm | Live Salterio (Psaltery) Performance and Lecture with Marc Armitano Domingo
Musician and researcher Marc Armitano Domingo will perform on the salterio (psaltery), a historical dulcimer instrument. The performance will be interspersed and connected with his lecture titled “The Hispanic Psaltery in the Americas.”
Beverages and Light Bites from Café NOMA
Enjoy specialty cocktails, mocktails and a light bites menu from Café NOMA leading up to Armitano Domingo’s lecture.

Additional Information
About Marc Armitano Domingo

Marc Armitano Domingo (b. 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City, working across oil painting, porcelain, and historical music performance. His visual work delves into sacred and natural themes, rendered through shadowy, atmospheric, and whimsical compositions on copper, linen, and porcelain.
As a leading performer and researcher of the salterio—a historical dulcimer popular in 17th- and 18th-century Spain, Italy, and colonial Latin America—Armitano Domingo focuses on reconstructing both the repertoire and authentic playing techniques. He performs on a replica 18th-century salterio, using special finger rings to pluck the strings rather than hammers.
Across media, his work engages with history and memory whether through nostalgic, tenebrous landscapes, delicate porcelain forms, or the vibrant, resonant sound of the salterio. His practice confronts the cultural amnesia that allows once-important traditions to fade, reclaiming forgotten forms and questioning why they were so readily lost to history.

Book Club: The Underground Railroad
2025-09-18 12:00 - 13:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
NOMA’s book club meets monthly to discuss fiction and non-fiction books related to art in the museum’s collection and exhibitions.
It is an informal group open to anyone on a month-to-month basis. You do not have to attend every meeting or read every book to participate. In addition to monthly book discussions, the book club meets periodically for curatorial programs related to the book selections.
Books are selected in advance and planned according to the museum’s exhibition schedule. Participants are expected to procure their own copy of the titles. Selections are also available at the NOMA Museum Shop, where museum members receive a 10% discount.
Register Now
Meetings are held in person or via Zoom. All meetings begin at 12 pm. For more information or questions, please email programs@noma.org.

About the Book
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

Fall Festival
2025-09-20 10:00 - 16:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
Come out to NOMA’s Fall Festival, a free outdoor festival hosted in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Enjoy live music and performances, art making activities, guided tours featuring highlights from the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, and more.
Free and open to all.

Program Line-Up
ENTERTAINMENT AND ACTIVITIES
Polo Silk Photography Station
DJ Audio Jocks
Move Ya Brass
Dow Dance Company
Da Lovebirds (Robin Barnes and Pat Casey)
Krewe des Fleurs
Party People Face Painting Station
Glitter Ladies Station
NOMA temporary tattoo station

FOOD VENDORS
Dat Dog
Imperial Woodpecker Snowballs
Crêpes à la Cart
Nori Guys
Cochon King BBQ
Café NOMA Bar (drinks only)
La Cocinita Restaurant

COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Broadmoor Improvement Association
Son of a Saint and William Jones
Congo Square Preservation Society
YAYA
New Orleans Public Library (NOPL)
The St. Charles Center for Faith + Action
Middle American Research Institute
Danny Fitzpatrick
Grow Dat Youth Farm
NOMA Creative Assembly

Schedule of Events
10:00 AM | DJ Audio Jocks, Polo Silk photography station, food vendors, and art activities begin
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM | Move Ya Brass Bounce Class (Oak Grove)
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM | Docent-led Sculpture Garden Tour
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Da Lovebirds performance (Oak Grove)
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM | Pixie Dust Glitter Station opens
11:00 AM – 3:30 PM | Party People Face Painting begins
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Radio Bird Quartet performance (Oak Grove)
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Krewe Des Fleurs
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | Docent-led Sculpture Garden Tour
2:30 PM – 3:00 PM | Dow Dance Company performance (Oak Grove)
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM | DJ set

Thank You to Our Sponsors for this Event
Lead Sponsor

Entertainment and Program Sponsors
Howard Family Foundation
Cammie and Charles Mayer

Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn (Ages 6-10)
2025-09-20 10:30 - 12:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Join us at the museum on select Saturday mornings for Studio KIDS! youth art-making workshops. We’ll take inspiration from artwork in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and make our own creations with a teaching artist.
Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn
Celebrate the arrival of autumn with this mixed media art lesson. Students will receive an introduction to watercolor painting, learning three foundational techniques. They will also pull inspiration from nature to create a textural artwork that showcases all they have learned. Families who register are encouraged to enjoy NOMA’s Fall Festival while their children participate in this art making activity.
Registration is $25 for members and $30 for other participants. Advance registration is required and includes the price of all art-making materials.

Register for Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn
Please note that there will be 2 sessions of this workshop offered on September 20th:
Artists ages 6-10 will be welcomed from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm

Register for the Ages 6-10 Workshop

Artists ages 11-14 will be welcomed from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Register for the Ages 11-14 Workshop

Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn (Ages 11-14)
2025-09-20 12:30 - 14:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Join us at the museum on select Saturday mornings for Studio KIDS! youth art-making workshops. We’ll take inspiration from artwork in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and make our own creations with a teaching artist.
Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn
Celebrate the arrival of autumn with this mixed media art lesson. Students will receive an introduction to watercolor painting, learning three foundational techniques. They will also pull inspiration from nature to create a textural artwork that showcases all they have learned. Families who register are encouraged to enjoy NOMA’s Fall Festival while their children participate in this art making activity.
Registration is $25 for members and $30 for other participants. Advance registration is required and includes the price of all art-making materials.

Register for Studio KIDS!: Painting Autumn
Please note that there will be 2 sessions of this workshop offered on September 20th:
Artists ages 6-10 will be welcomed from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm

SOLD OUT

Artists ages 11-14 will be welcomed from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Register for the Ages 11-14 Workshop

Gallery Talk with Curator Mel Buchanan
2025-09-24 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Every week, NOMA hosts gallery talks in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden led by curators, artists, and other special guests. These lively, participatory conversations provide a moment to take a close look at one work—or a selection of works—currently on view.
This week, join Mel Buchanan, NOMA’s RosaMary Curator of Decorative Arts & Design, for a gallery talk on New Acquisitions in Contemporary Craft in the Elise M. Besthoff Foundation Gallery on the second floor of the museum. This talk will be offered at 12:30 and 6:00 pm the same day.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

Dawoud Bey: Elegy Patron and Member Preview
2025-09-25 17:30 - 20:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Explore the exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy at NOMA before it opens to the public.
This is a patron- and member-only event.
Learn More about NOMA membership

About Dawoud Bey: Elegy
Dawoud Bey: Elegy is an evocatively poetic exhibition in which the acclaimed photographer considers the early presence of African Americans through visualizations of the landscapes where histories took place. Through the interweaving of three photographic series—”Stony the Road “(2023), “In This Here Place” (2019), and “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” (2017)—Bey offers a framework through which to conceptualize the landscapes of Virginia, Louisiana, and Ohio (respectively) not merely as historical sites of struggle, but also as places of perseverance and fortitude. The exhibition also includes two films: “Evergreen” (2019) and “350,000” (2023).
Learn More about the Exhibition

NOMA at Night: Dawoud Bey: Elegy Opening Celebration
2025-09-26 18:00 - 21:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Get creative and explore the museum after hours during NOMA at Night.
Celebrate the public opening of special exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy at NOMA with an evening of live music from the Dr. Michael White Quartet; a light bites menu from Café NOMA; a 3-Dimensional landscape art-making station; extended hours and discounts on Elegy exhibition catalogues in the NOMA Museum Shop; gallery talks by exhibition curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Brian Piper, NOMA’s Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings; and much more.
$15 for members
$30 general admission
Free admission for attendees ages 19 and under
Purchase Tickets

Program Details
Live Music from the Dr. Michael White Quartet
Enjoy a live musical performance from the evening’s headlining performers the Dr. Michael White Quartet, featuring famed New Orleanian clarinetist and band leader Dr. Michael White.
DJ Set from Jer’Lisa Devezin
Join artist, professor, and Creative Assembly resident artist Jer’Lisa Devezin for a DJ set and dance the night away.
NOMA Museum Shop
Check out the exhibition catalogue at the NOMA Museum Shop, which will be open throughout the evening. NOMA Members receive 20% off Dawoud Bey: Elegy exhibition catalogues, and other attendees will receive 10% off.
Food and Drinks from Café NOMA
Cocktails, mocktails, and light bites will be available at Café NOMA throughout the evening.
And More!
More details about this event to be announced soon. Please check this page for updates.

About the Performers
Dr. Michael White Quartet
Dr. Michael White
Dr. Michael White is among the most visible and important New Orleans musicians today. He is one of only a few of today’s native New Orleans born artists to continue the authentic traditional jazz style. Dr. White is noted for his classic New Orleans jazz clarinet sound, for leading several popular bands, and for his many efforts to preserve and extend the early jazz tradition. Dr. White is a relative of early generation jazz musicians, including bassist Papa John Joseph, clarinetist Willie Joseph, and saxophonist and clarinetist Earl Fouche.
White is also a jazz historian, producer, lecturer, and consultant. He has developed and performed many jazz history themed programs. He has written and published numerous essays in books, journals, and other publications. For several years he served as a guest coach at the Juilliard Music School (Juilliard Jazz). He was the musical director for numerous Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts. He has been the traditional jazz consultant and coordinator for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since 1995. White has also had a long association of performing and recording with acclaimed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

About Dawoud Bey: Elegy
Dawoud Bey: Elegy draws upon the factual and imagined realities of the early African American presence in the United States. Including forty-five black-and-white photographs and two film installations, the exhibition elucidates the deeply profound historical memory still embedded in geography at historically significant sites in Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio. Through the interweaving of three photographic series—”Stony the Road “(2023), “In This Here Place” (2019), and “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” (2017)—Bey offers a framework through which to conceptualize the landscapes of Virginia, Louisiana, and Ohio (respectively) through images that convey the memories of our shared American past.
Learn More
Thank You to Our Supporters
NOMA at Night is supported in part by grant funds from Ruby K. Worner Charitable Trust through the PNC Charitable Trusts Grant Review Committee; 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.

Dawoud Bey: Elegy Weekend Symposium
2025-09-27 13:00 - 16:30 | NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts
Join us for a day celebrating and engaging with the newly opened exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy. We are honored to feature this day of discussion in NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts with local and visiting artists (including American photographer Dawoud Bey), curators, historians, and activists.
The afternoon’s first panel will feature artist Dawoud Bey; Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and LeRonn Brooks, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Collections at the Getty Research Institute, in a conversation around the exhibition and catalogue.
The second panel highlights Kathe Hambrick, Executive of the Director Amistad Research Center and Founder of The River Road African American Museum; Jo Banner and Dr Joy Banner, Co-Founders of The Descendants Project; for a discussion centering the land of Louisiana and, its history, present and future.
The day culminates in a catalogue signing.
This program is free and open to all. Advance registration is recommended.
Register Now
In order to view the exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy, a museum admission ticket is required. Tickets can be purchased at the admissions desk in the Great Hall or online.

Program Details
Dawoud Bey: Elegy Catalogue Contributor Panel | 1:00-2:00pm
Featuring artist Dawoud Bey; Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and LeRonn Brooks, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Collections at the Getty Research Institute. Moderated by Brian Piper.
Intermission | 2:00-2:30pm
Panel Discussion | 2:30-3:30pm
Featuring Kathe Hambrick, Director of the Amistad Research Center and Founder of the River Road African American Museum; and Jo Banner and Dr. Joy Banner, founders and directors of the Descendants Project and Woodland Plantation. Moderated by Kristina Kay Robinson.
Dawoud Bey: Elegy exhibition catalogue signing with Bey, Cassel Oliver, and Brooks | 3:30 – 4:15 pm
Cafe NOMA, which is adjacent to the Lapis Center for the Arts, will be open for food and beverage purchases throughout the afternoon

About the Participants
About Dawoud Bey
American photographer Dawoud Bey, photo by Frank Ishman
Groundbreaking artist and MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey examines the Black past and present. His photographs and film installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Bey’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020-2022), and Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2023-2024) and New Orleans Museum of Art (2025-2026); and Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits at the Denver Art Museum (2024-2025). He has been the subject of several monographs, including Elegy (Aperture/VMFA, 2023), which chronicles Bey’s history projects and landscape-based work. Bey is the recipient of numerous awards including five honorary doctorates, and in 2024, the artist was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bey lives and works in Chicago and New York. He is currently a Critic at Yale University, where he received his Masters in Fine Arts, and is Professor Emeritus at Columbia College, Chicago.
About Valerie Cassel Oliver
Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Valerie Cassel Oliver
Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to this role, she served as a senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, she was one of six curators selected to organize the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial. Cassel Oliver has organized several special exhibitions at VMFA, including Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen (2018), Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South (2019), The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse (2021) and Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass (2022). In addition, she has produced an installation series, Lewis Focus, that has featured the work of Theaster Gates, Athena LaTocha, Annabeth Rosen and Ebony Patterson
About LeRonn Brooks
Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks, curator of modern and contemporary collections, and the African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI), at the Getty Research Institute
Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks is an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary collections, and the African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI), at the Getty Research Institute. Brooks is curator of African American collections and acquisitions at the GRI. He is responsible for building and developing collections to promote advanced research in the study of African American art history. In his capacity at the GRI, Brooks is also the curator, and co-curator, of several archives including those of the Johnson Publishing Company, architect Paul Revere Williams, sculptor Richard Hunt, interdisciplinary artist, Maren Hassinger, and scholar Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, among others. His interviews and essays on African American art, and poetry, have been featured in Callaloo Journal, The International Review of African American Art, and the Aperture Foundation, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues. Brooks earned a Doctor of Philosophy, Art History, from City University of New York, NY, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from Hunter College, NY.
About Jo Banner
Jo Banner, Founder and Director of The Descendants Project
Jo Banner is the founder and director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit she co-founded with her twin sister, Dr. Joy Banner, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, she uses her education to honor the legacy of enslaved people while defending descendant communities.Jo’s mission includes preserving the burial grounds of the enslaved and protecting the last 11 miles untouched by industrial development in Cancer Alley. Through her work, she envisions a just transition for people and land to achieve economic and environmental liberation.
About Dr. Joy Banner
Dr. Joy banner, Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Descendants Project
Dr. Joy Banner is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit organization founded to protect the health, land, and lives of the Black descendant community in Louisiana’s River Parishes—an area known as “Cancer Alley.”After earning her Ph.D. in communications and B.S. in marketing from Louisiana State University, Dr. Banner taught business communications, marketing and entrepreneurship at LSU, where she advanced to Chair of the Management program before returning to her hometown of Wallace, Louisiana. Joy has 20+ years in heritage and tourism, which she has leveraged to champion the preservation of Black historic sites, heritage, and communities.
About Kathe Hambrick
Kathe Hambrick, Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center
Kathe Hambrick is the Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center, where she brings over 30 years of experience in public history, curation, and interpretation to preserve and share pivotal narratives of America’s ethnic and racial history. As the founder of the River Road African American Museum in Louisiana, Hambrick has championed the preservation of African American history in the Mississippi River parishes. She holds a Master’s in Museum Studies from Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) and has curated over 100 exhibits, including “The Rural Roots of Jazz.” A published author and consultant, she continues to shape a more inclusive historical narrative through her work.
About Kristina Kay Robinson
Kristina Kay Robinson, poet, writer, independent curator and visual artist
Kristina Kay Robinson is a poet, writer, independent curator and visual artist born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her writing in various genres has appeared in Art in America, Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, The Baffler, The Nation, The Massachusetts Review and Elle among other outlets. Robinson is a recipient of the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism and an Andy Warhol Arts Writing grant. Currently she serves as the New Orleans editor at large for the Atlanta based, Burnaway magazine.
About the Amistad Research Center
The Amistad Research Center is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most comprehensive independent archives specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic minorities. The Center is dedicated to preserving this history by providing a home to manuscripts, photographs, books, periodicals, and works of art that bear witness to a post worth sharing with the future.
About The Descendants Project
The Descendants Project is an emerging organization committed to the intergenerational healing and flourishing of the Black descendant community in the Louisiana river parishes. The lands of the river parishes hold the intersecting histories of enslavement, settler colonialism, and environmental degradation.
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We are descended from the enslaved men, women, and children who were forced to labor at one or more of the hundreds of plantations that line the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Starting in the 1970s, large industrial petrochemical plants began purchasing the land of these plantations still surrounded by vulnerable Black descendant communities. The region is now known as “Cancer Alley” for the extreme risks of cancer and death due to pollution. The community faces many other problems such as food insecurity, high unemployment, high poverty, land dispossession, and health issues that stem from a culture of disregard for Black communities and their quality of life.
​​
Through programming, education, advocacy, and outreach, The Descendants Project is committed to reversing the vagrancies of slavery through healing and restorative work. We aim to eliminate the narrative violence of plantation tourism and champion the voice of the Black descendant community while demanding action that supports the total well-being of Black descendants.
About the River Road African American Museum
The mission of the River Road African American Museum (RRAAM) is to educate visitors about the history and culture of African Americans in the rural communities of south Louisiana through the collection, preservation, and interpretation of art, artifacts, and historic buildings.
About Dawoud Bey: Elegy
Dawoud Bey: Elegy draws upon the factual and imagined realities of the early African American presence in the United States. Including forty-five black-and-white photographs and two film installations, the exhibition elucidates the deeply profound historical memory still embedded in geography at historically significant sites in Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio. Through the interweaving of three photographic series—”Stony the Road “(2023), “In This Here Place” (2019), and “Night Coming Tenderly, Black” (2017)—Bey offers a framework through which to conceptualize the landscapes of Virginia, Louisiana, and Ohio (respectively) through images that convey the memories of our shared American past.
Learn More

Elders Sacred Talk Series: Martin Payton and Eric Waters
2025-10-01 17:30 - 19:00
NOMA and the Congo Square Preservation Society present the Elders Sacred Talk Series with prolific elder New Orleanians, celebrating the lives they lead while providing the opportunity for visitors to learn firsthand about the impact they’ve had on our city. This conversation between Martin Payton and Eric Waters will be moderated by Ron Bechet.

This program is included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative.

About the Speakers
Martin Payton

Martin Payton, a native of New Orleans, has sustained a distinguished career as both artist and educator for more than five decades. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Xavier University of Louisiana and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Following his return to New Orleans, Payton embarked on an academic career that included appointments at Southern University at New Orleans, Southern University in Baton Rouge, and Xavier University, where he played a formative role in shaping successive generations of artists.

Payton’s artistic practice is most closely identified with his monumental public sculptures and monochromatic constructions, created through the welding of salvaged industrial steel. By reconfiguring discarded materials, Payton engages in a process that is simultaneously aesthetic and cultural, transforming the remnants of industrial production into abstract forms resonant with historical, spiritual, and communal associations. His collaborative work Spirit House with John Scott stands as a significant intervention in the visual and cultural landscape of New Orleans.

Peyton’s work is represented in major institutional collections, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, the William King Museum of Art in Virginia, and the Rosekrans Runnymede Sculpture Garden in California. Payton’s work is recognized not only for its formal innovation but also for its critical engagement with African American cultural memory and the material legacies of labor and industry.

Eric Waters

For more than four decades, photographer Eric Waters has served as a central documentarian of Black social life and cultural traditions in New Orleans. A graduate of Dillard University, he studied photography under the late Marion J. Porter, whose mentorship shaped his early artistic development. While Waters has been widely sought after as an event photographer, his enduring reputation rests on his incisive visual record of Second Line parades and the ceremonial pageantry of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition—cultural expressions that lie at the heart of New Orleans’s African American community.

Waters’s photography captures the dynamism, movement, and layered symbolism of Black vernacular performance. His images serve as vital historical archives, preserving traditions that both affirm and continually reinvent communal identity. His work has been featured in international, national, and local media outlets and publications, including Ties That Bind and Freedom’s Dance: Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in New Orleans (co-authored with Karen Celestan). He also co-edited SEEING BLACK: Black Photography in New Orleans, 1840 and Beyond with Kalamu ya Salaam and Shana M. Griffin, a landmark volume that situates Black photographers within a broader historical and cultural continuum.

Waters received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Documentary Photographer of the Year award in 2018 and was named a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence in 2019. His body of work continues to be regarded as both an artistic achievement and a crucial intervention in the visual historiography of New Orleans’s Black cultural practices.

About Elders Sacred Talks and Art Thrives
NOMA’s Art Thrives initiative presents creative aging programs designed to support visitors ages 55 and up. In addition to art-making workshops, courses, and opportunities for hands-on art-making, the Elders Sacred Talk Series provides a platform for older adults in New Orleans to share their experiences with audiences of all ages.
The Elders Sacred Talk Series is presented in partnership between NOMA and the Congo Square Preservation Society. Art Thrives is supported by E.A. Michelson Philanthropy.

Gallery Talk with Curator Brian Piper
2025-10-01 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Every week, NOMA hosts gallery talks in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden led by curators, artists, and other special guests. These lively, participatory conversations provide a moment to take a close look at one work—or a selection of works—currently on view.
In celebration of the opening of the special exhibition Dawoud Bey: Elegy, join Brian Piper; NOMA’s Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings; for a conversation about works on view in the exhibition. The gallery talk will be offered at 12:30 and 6:00 pm this day.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

Salon Supper Club Presented by First Horizon Bank
2025-10-03 18:00 - 21:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
This year, the New Orleans Museum of Art introduces a new food- and art-focused series of events inspired by works on view: the Salon Supper Club Presented by First Horizon Bank.
This Salon Supper Club will feature an elegant seated dinner with wine and cocktails in NOMA’s Great Hall. Guests will also explore featured exhibitions and installations at the museum while celebrating the ability of art to connect us with friends, family, and new acquaintances.

https://noma.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/v2-Noma-scripted-video-1.mp4
Salon Supper Club Presented by First Horizon Bank
A Feast for the Senses ♦ Una Fiesta para los Sentidos
Celebrating NOMA’s Re-Installation of American Art across South, Central, and North America from the Pre-Columbian Era to the Present Day
Event Chairs | Millie Davis Kohn and Robert Kohn, Juan and Martine Linares, Pam Ryan and Meaghan Ryan Bonavita
NOMA Volunteer Committee Chair | Taylor Pospisil
Your support of the Salon Supper Club events provides critical resources to exhibitions, educational initiatives, and programming at NOMA.
For sponsorship inquiries and questions about the Salon Supper Club, please email salonsupperclub@noma.org or call 504.658.4121.

Event Tickets
Get your tickets now for the next installation of the Salon Supper Club on Friday, October 3.
Limited tickets are available for purchase online only until Thursday, October 2, at Noon. Tickets will not be available at the doors of the event. Black tie or elegant cocktail attire is required.
$1000 | Fall Supper Club Ticket
Grants ticket holders access to the event from 6-9 pm (limited to 140 guests)
Purchase Tickets

Event Details
Guest Chef Alfredo Nogueira, Chef-Partner of Cane & Table and VALS, and Executive Chef of Cure in New Orleans
Chef Alfredo “Fredo” Nogueira, Chef-Partner of Cane & Table and VALS, andExecutive Chef of Cure in New Orleans

Live Musical Performance from the Javier Olondo Trio, Thanks to Support from the New Orleans Jazz Museum
Javier Olondo Trio

Live Musical Performance from Psalterist Marc Armitano Domingo
Marc Armitano Domingo
Live Dance Performances from Argentine Tango Duo Celina Rotundo and Hugo Patyn
Celina Rotundo and Hugo Patyn, Argentine Tango Duo

About the Reinstallation
More details about the reinstallation of the Arts of the Americas will be available soon.

Sponsorship Levels and Benefits
Take advantage of the opportunity to join as a sponsor for all three Salon Supper Club events in 2025 on Thursday, May 22; Thursday, July 17; and Friday, October 3.
$25,000 | Platinum Sponsor

12 Tickets to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a sponsor with name or logo in all press materials
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall NOMA Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on printed invitations, evites, and on noma.org
Sponsor recognition on 2,500 invitations; on www.noma.org; postings to Facebook and Instagram; and all event e-blasts; mention on an Instagram post + story before the event and mention in an Instagram story at the event; 2 mentions on Facebook.
Listed in paid advertisements
1 NOMA exhibition catalog

Become a Platinum Sponsor
$15,000 | Gold Sponsor

10 tickets to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a sponsor with name or logo in all press materials
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall NOMA Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on 2,500 invitations; on www.noma.org; postings to Facebook and Instagram; and all event e-blasts
Listed in paid advertisements
NOMA Fellows membership
1 NOMA exhibition catalog

Become a Gold Sponsor
$8,000 | Silver Sponsor

6 tickets to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on
Sponsor recognition on 2,500 invitations, on www.noma.org and all event e-blasts
NOMA Fellows membership
1 NOMA exhibition catalog

Become a Silver Sponsor
$5,500 | Benefactor

4 tickets to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall NOMA Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on 2,500 invitations, on www.noma.org and all event e-blasts
NOMA Fellows membership

Become a Benefactor
$2,000 | Supporter Couple

2 tickets to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall NOMA Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on evites, on www.noma.org, and all event e-blasts
NOMA Fellows membership

Become a Supporter
$1,000 | Supporter Single

1 ticket to the Fall Salon Supper Club dinner
Recognition as a Sponsor at the Fall NOMA Salon Supper Club
Invitations to exhibition patron preview openings during 2025–26
Sponsor recognition on evites; on www.noma.org with over 130,000 monthly hits; and e-blasts to over 31,000 subscribers

Become a Supporter
For sponsorship inquiries and questions about the Salon Supper Club, please email salonsupperclub@noma.org or call 504.658.4121.

Thank You to Our Current Sponsors
Presenting Sponsor

Gold Sponsors
Anonymous
Walda Besthoff
Silver Sponsors
Elizabeth Boh
Feil Family Foundation
Peggy and Timber Floyd
Benefactors
Mrs. Robert H. Boh
Eileen and Joey Devall
Shaun and Foster Duncan
The Helis Foundation
Kim and Thomas Henley
Jane and Rodney Steiner
Phyllis M. Taylor
Elizabeth and James Williams
Supporters
Wayne Amedee
Diego Arce
Cathy and Morris Bart
R.P. Bartee
Donna Kay Berger
Meaghan Ryan Bonavita and Joe Bonavita
Broadmoor, LLC
Caroline and Murray Calhoun
Luz and Salvador Caputto
Melanie Dees
Ann Duffy and John Skinner
Catherine and David Edwards
Pam Davis Friedler
Julie and Ted George
Ana and Juan Gershanik
Yolande and Gray Goudreau
Dr. Kelly E. Haynie
Sarah and Marshall Hevron
Millie and Robert Kohn
Kristen and Paul Leonard
Martine and Juan Linares
Blanca Rosa Maldonado, M.D.
Ellen Manshel
Renee and Paul Masinter
Cammie and Charles Mayer
Max Moreno
Red River Bank
Eduardo E. Rodriguez
Pamela and William Ryan
Mimi and Claude Schlesinger
Betty and Greg Speyrer
Susu and Andrew Stall
Suzanne and Robert Thomas
Jenny and Robb Vorhoff
Ginny Wise and Kevin Wilkins
Lele and Brent Wood
Libations
Sazerac Co.
Special Thanks
Urban Earth Studios
Café NOMA

Event Committee to be Announced Soon

About Chef Alfredo Nogueira
Chef Alfredo Nogueira, affectionately known by friends and colleagues as “Fredo,” is the Chef-Partner of acclaimed bars and restaurants Cane & Table and VALS, and Executive Chef of Cure in New Orleans. As a New Orleans native of Cuban descent, Fredo’s culinary style is shaped by his innate appreciation for Cajun cuisine coupled with his Cuban heritage and upbringing.
At Cane & Table, he married the two cuisines, resulting in vibrant, seasonally driven menus–with the restaurant featured most recently on The New York Times’ list of “The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now.” The recognition joins other accolades for Cane & Table, including Bon Appetit featuring it as one of the “Five Best New Cocktail Bars in America,” and heralded as one of the best bars in America by Food & Wine, Esquire, Eater, and THRILLIST, and one of the best new bars in the South by Garden & Gun and Southern Living.
At Cure, Fredo’s small-plate menu complements the craft cocktail menu, which was recognized by the James Beard Award in 2018 for “Outstanding Bar Program.” And, at VALS, as Chef-Partner, he features a menu of Mexican-inspired cuisine, from tacos and tostadas to ceviches. Prior to his return to New Orleans, Fredo spent over a decade in Chicago, notably withWilliam von Hartz on the seasonal pop-up Flipside Café, and with Paul Kahan’s One Off Hospitality group. In 2013 he partnered with Analogue Partners and Co-Bar Directors Robby Haynes and Henry Prendergast to create the menu at Analogue, which debuted in December 2013.

Gallery Talk with Curator Orlando Hernández Ying
2025-10-09 12:30 - 13:00, 2025-10-09 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Every week, NOMA hosts gallery talks in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden led by curators, artists, and other special guests. These lively, participatory conversations provide a moment to take a close look at one work—or a selection of works—currently on view.
In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the opening of the new special installation of Cuzco paintings in the Great Hall, join NOMA’s Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas Orlando Hernández Ying for a conversation about these works on view. This talk will be offered at 12:30 pm and 6:00 pm the same day.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

Japan Fest
2025-10-11 10:00 - 16:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Celebrate Japanese culture through art, performances, food, and more at Japan Fest, organized by NOMA, the Japan Club in New Orleans, and the Consulate General of Japan in Nashville.
Sample Japanese cuisine, enjoy traditional dance groups, martial arts demonstrations, and tours throughout the day. Shop a variety of vendors offering unique goods in a festive atmosphere. Costumes are welcome, please see costume guidelines below.
Please note: The expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden is not included in the Japan Fest festivities but will be open to the general public.
Tickets for Japan Fest are $10 General Admission, $5 for NOMA members, and free for attendees 19 years old and under
Purchase Tickets
Pre-purchasing Japan Fest tickets online is strongly recommended. Tickets are also available for purchase at the admissions desk in the Great Hall, as well as in front of the main gate of the Besthoff Sculpture Garden.

Festival Schedule
All Day Activities
Play Go with Crane’s Nest Go Club (Samuel H. Kress Galleries, first floor)
Buddha Board demonstration (NOMA Museum Shop, first floor)
Samurai Suit Fitting with Japan Society of New Orleans (Second floor elevator lobby)
Schedule of Events

Start Time

Event and Location

10:00 am

Kaminari Taiko of Houston drum performance (Portico, front of museum)
Open Origami (Art Studio, second floor)

10:30 am

Baton Rouge Eishin-Ryu Iaido Swordsmanship Demonstration (Sculpture Garden, Oak Grove stage)
Minyo Dance Group Performance (Lapis Center for the Arts, first floor)

11:00 am

New Orleans Kendo Club demonstration (Sculpture Garden, Oak Grove)
Youth Japanese language workshop (Art Studio, second floor)
Intro to Zazen Meditation with New Orleans Zen Temple (second floor hallway)
Gallery tour (Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery, third floor)

11:30 am

Japan Fest Welcome and Opening Remarks (Portico stage, front of museum)
Candy5 demonstration (Lapis Center for the Arts, first floor)
“Intro to Go: The Game Japan Revolutionized for 1300 Years” workshop (Samuel H. Kress Galleries, first floor)
Teen Japanese language workshop (Art Studio, second floor)

12:00 pm

J-pop Kaigai Idol Showcase (Sculpture Garden, Oak Grove)
Open Origami (Art Studio, second floor)
Youth-focused Gallery Tour (Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery, third floor)

12:30 pm

Kaminari Taiko of Houston drum performance (Portico, front of museum)

1:00 pm

Japanese Weekend School (Portico, front of museum)
LA Karate Association Shotokan Karate workshop & demonstration (Sculpture Garden, Oak Grove stage)
Miki Fuji band performance (Lapis Center for the Arts, first floor)
Gallery tour (Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery, third floor)

1:30 pm

Adult Japanese language workshop (Art Studio, second floor)

2:00 pm

New Orleans Rufflebutts Fashion Show (Portico, front of museum)
Aikido of New Orleans and NOLA Aikido workshop and demonstration (Sculpture Garden, Oak Grove)
“Intro to Go: The Game Japan Revolutionized for 1300 Years” workshop (Samuel H. Kress Galleries, first floor)
Youth-focused Gallery Tour (Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery, third floor)

2:30 pm

Cosplay Costume Contest (Portico, front of museum)
Zen Temple closing ceremony (Lapis Center for the Arts, first floor)
Taiko Drumming workshop (Art Studio, second floor)

3:00 pm

Gallery tour (Kurt A. Gitter, M.D. and Alice Yelen Gitter Gallery, third floor)
Japan America Society of North West Florida Folk Dance performance (Lapis Center for the Arts, first floor)

3:30 pm

Kaminari Taiko of Houston drum performance (Portico, front of museum)

4:00 pm

End of Japan Fest, museum closed

Participants

Please note: some vendors for Japan Fest accept cash only. Cash is recommended for making purchases at the festival.

Food Vendors

Ajun Cajun

Oni 225

Nori Guys

Violet Sprinkles

EM’s Bakery

Nola Cane Juice & More

Candy5 Traditional Candy Art

Observatory 11

Café NOMA

Merchandise Vendors

Kawaii NOLA

Showtime Sweeti

NOLA Kimekomi

SofinaCo

Minty Mix

TwootieTarte

Shiratori’s Cove

B.sweetLA

Madame Butterfly Nagasaki

Donn Davis

Art by Artemis Solas

NOLA Rufflebuts

Shattered Rose Jewelry

Japanese Weekend School

Performers, Tours, and Workshop Hosts

Aikido of New Orleans and NOLA Aikido

Louisiana Karate Association

Minoyo Dance Group

Japan America Society of NW Florida Folk Dance

Japanese Weekend School of New Orleans

Kaminari Taiko of Houston

Kaigai Idol Showcase

Japanese Fashion Club (NOLA RuffleButts Costume Contest & Fashion Show)

Japanese Language Workshop

New Orleans Taiko Drum Workshop

Gitter Gallery of Japanese Art tours

Candy5 Traditional Candy Art

New Orleans Zen Temple

Tablers

Japan Club of New Orleans

Japan Society of New Orleans

Japanese Consulate of Nashville

APAS (Asian Pacific American Society)

Just Another Con

Cranes Nest GO Club

Aikido of New Orleans and NOLA Aikido

Louisiana Karate Association

Jefferson Parish Library Anime Club

COSTUME GUIDELINES
For the safety and comfort of all guests, as well as the artwork at NOMA:

Costume masks that obstruct or cover the wearer’s face are prohibited. Face masks covering the nose and mouth for health reasons are welcomed but not required.
Accessories or toy weapons, such as swords, greater than 2 feet in length are not permitted.
No sharp objects are allowed.
Costume components cannot extend more than 2 feet in length from the body.
Please keep all costumes family friendly.

Other restrictions may apply at NOMA’s discretion. A check room will be available for any items not in compliance. For questions regarding costumes, please call 504.658.4100. Please note that admission is required for fashion show participants.

Sponsors

Cornerstone Chemical Company, LLC

Gray Construction

UBE C1 Chemicals America, Inc.

Consulate General of Japan Nashville

Japan Foundation of New York

Japan Society of New Orleans

Japan Club of New Orleans

Denka Performance Elastomers

Zen Noh Grain Corporation

CGB Enterprises

Observatory 11

SMBC Bank

Tai Chi in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden
2025-10-13 18:00 - 19:00, 2025-10-20 18:00 - 19:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
Explore movement and meditation during outdoor tai chi classes in NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden every Monday evening.
Class is $10; $5 for NOMA members. Registration remains open until 3 pm the day before class. Please bring a digital or printed version of your ticket to class. Enter at the main entrance gate to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden on Dueling Oaks Drive.
REGISTER NOW
These classes are outside and will be canceled for severe weather. Registrants will be notified of cancellation via email by 5 pm the day before class. Call 504.658.4128 or email education@noma.org with any questions.

Gallery Talks Every Wednesday
2025-10-15 12:30 - 13:00, 2025-10-15 18:00 - 18:30 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Every week, NOMA hosts gallery talks in the museum and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden led by curators, artists, and other special guests. These lively, participatory conversations provide a moment to take a close look at one work—or a selection of works—currently on view.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

Public Tours Every Wednesday and Saturday
2025-10-15 14:00, 2025-10-18 14:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
NOMA provides guided tours of the galleries with museum docents and staff every Wednesday and Saturday. During these tours, you’ll explore the museum’s permanent collection of nearly 50,000 works of art and exhibitions currently on view.
Included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative. When you arrive at NOMA, check in at the admissions desk for directions to the appropriate location.

Soul-Sip at NOMA
2025-10-15 18:00 - 21:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
Wine is among humankind’s oldest beverages. Deeply rooted in human history and culture, affirmed by ancient brewing and distilling pottery, depicted in paintings by great masters, and is a staple in museum social settings.
NOMA presents Soul-Sip, a one-of-a-kind art and wine series that offers a unique blend of relaxation, art appreciation, and wine tasting.
The evening includes gallery tours featuring select wine-related works of art from NOMA’s permanent collection, guided meditation, a three-wine flight, and small bites from Cafe NOMA.
Food, wine, and meditation kit included.
General Admission $65 | NOMA Members $55
Register Now for October 15
NOTE: The evening begins with guided meditation, so please arrive by 6:00pm.

Book Club: The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World
2025-10-16 12:00 - 13:00 | New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans, LA, 70119
NOMA’s book club meets monthly to discuss fiction and non-fiction books related to art in the museum’s collection and exhibitions.
It is an informal group open to anyone on a month-to-month basis. You do not have to attend every meeting or read every book to participate. In addition to monthly book discussions, the book club meets periodically for curatorial programs related to the book selections.
Books are selected in advance and planned according to the museum’s exhibition schedule. Participants are expected to procure their own copy of the titles. Selections are also available at the NOMA Museum Shop, where museum members receive a 10% discount.
Register Now
Meetings are held in person or via Zoom. All meetings begin at 12 pm. For more information or questions, please email programs@noma.org.

About the Book
The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World
by Jennifer Higgie

It’s not so long ago that a woman’s expressed interest in other realms would have ruined her reputation, or even killed her. And yet spiritualism, in various incarnations, has influenced numerous men—including lauded modernist artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich and Paul Klee—without repercussion. The fact that so many radical female artists of their generation—and earlier—also drank deeply from the same spiritual well has been sorely neglected for too long.
In The Other Side, we explore the lives and work of a group of extraordinary women, from the twelfth-century mystic, composer, and artist Hildegard of Bingen to the nineteenth-century English spiritualist Georgiana Houghton, whose paintings swirl like a cosmic Jackson Pollock; the early twentieth-century Swedish artist, Hilma af Klint, who painted with the help of her spirit guides and whose recent exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim broke all attendance records to the ‘Desert Transcendentalist’, Agnes Pelton, who painted her visions beneath the vast skies of California. We also learn about the Swiss healer, Emma Kunz, who used geometric drawings to treat her patients and the British surrealist and occultist, Ithell Colquhoun, whose estate of more than 5,000 works recently entered the Tate gallery collection. While the individual work of these artists is unique, the women loosely shared the same goal: to communicate with, and learn from, other dimensions.
Weaving in and out of these myriad lives while sharing her own memories of otherworldly experiences, Jennifer Higgie discusses the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. A radical reappraisal of a marginalized group of artists, The Other Side is an intoxicating blend of memoir, biography, and art history.

"Gathering in the Grief: Visualizing, Healing, Living With, and Honoring the Lost" Workshop with Creative Assembly Resident Artist Horton Humble
2025-10-16 17:00 - 19:00 | NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts
Grief is both personal and shared; it comforts yet isolates, silences yet speaks. Through art, ritual, and remembrance, grief declares: this mattered, this hurts, this was loved.
On Thursday, October 16, from 5 to 7 pm, join us in NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts for a workshop led by Creative Assembly resident and visual artist Horton Humble, moderator Robin Pharo, visual artist Veronica Caseras Lee, musician Ruben Watts, and licensed marriage and family therapist Khara Scott-Bey. Participants will collaboratively create a large-scale cereal box artwork using materials linked to the five stages of grief, illuminating how grief shapes creative expression and lived experience.
Workshop leaders will also share perspectives on how grief influences art—through a painter’s palette, a musician’s notes, and New Orleans’ cultural traditions such as the funeral procession and Second Line.
This program is free and open to all. No registration is required for this workshop.

About the Workshop Leaders
Horton Humble

Horton Humble (b. 1970, New Orleans) is a self-taught painter and sculptor whose work explores themes of resilience, identity, and cultural memory. His debut series Debris (2007) used wood from Hurricane Katrina’s wreckage, followed by Transit Urban (2008), created during travels across Africa.
Time in Lisbon (2012–2015) inspired The Lisbon Series and his first work in ceramics. Returning home, he co-founded Level Artist Collective and later completed The Guardian (2017), a public sculpture for the Helis Foundation’s Poydras Corridor project. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the Outsider Art Fair in Paris and solo shows in Marseille, and regionally at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Humble continues to create large-scale, expressive canvases while leading workshops and community projects in New Orleans. Horton has permanent pieces at the Ogden Museum and Luciano’s Benetton Imago Mundi Collection in Italy.

Robin Pharo
Moderator Robin Pharo is a serial entrepreneur with multiple diverse businesses including Treysta Group, a multi–faceted firm that specializes in hospitality-based businesses. Her other businesses include the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub in Mt Horeb, WI and Camp&Common, and a special event space in New Orleans. Pharo is also a nationally recognized speaker and moderator who has worked with many national organizations including the National Association of Home Builders, Wisconsin Environmental Initiate, US Green Building Council, the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and more. Ms. Pharo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a publisher.

Veronica Casares Lee
Veronica Casares Lee, born in Michoacán, Mexico in 1974, is a multidisciplinary artist. She studied at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) and earned a scholarship to attend Pratt Institute. From 2000 to 2008, Veronica was a resident artist at Haven Art in Port Washington, New York, contributing significantly to the creative community. In 2008, she and her family relocated to Michoacán, Mexico, where she shifted her focus to working primarily with ceramics and painting, infusing her work with the cultural richness of her homeland. In 2016, Veronica moved to New Orleans, where she currently resides and passionately pursues her art as a full-time artist, capturing the essence of the city in her diverse and evolving body of work.

Ruben Watts
Ruben Watts is a New Orleans-based percussionist known for a style of drumming played in New Orleans usually associated with the Black Masking Indian tradition. Over the years, he has expanded this style to include other percussion and hand crafted instruments.
Ruben plays with a group called Public Relations and New Orleans Folkloric, which pays tribute to the ancestral Heroes and Sheroes of our culture. He has played with groups including the Creole Osceola Mardi Gras Indians, Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., Percussion Inc., Casa Samba, and cousin John Boutte, to name a few.

Khara Scott-Bey
Khara Scott-Bey EXA, LMFT (she/they) is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a focus in art therapy based in New Orleans. Scott-Bey is also a liberatory life coach, an artist, and a community organizer. With over 20 years of experience in mental health and art therapy, Khara’s work blends African theology, social justice and embodied practices to support people in cultivating liberation, authenticity, and wholeness. She is the founder of Live to Become Art!, a healing and creative platform rooted in the belief that through the act of creating, we transform. Learn more at www.livetobecome.com.

About Creative Assembly
Launched in 2021, NOMA’s Creative Assembly residency promotes community engagement by welcoming artists to collaborate throughout the year with the museum’s permanent collection, special exhibitions, and programs. Creative Assembly Cohort members are provided funds and museum support to develop artistic projects and public offerings, like programs and workshops.
Learn more at noma.org/learn/creative-assembly/.

Yoga in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Saturday
2025-10-18 08:00 - 09:00 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
Take in the beauty of NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden during outdoor yoga sessions every Saturday morning.
Class is $10; $5 for NOMA members. Registration remains open until 3 pm the day before class. Please bring a digital or printed version of your ticket to class. Enter at the main entrance gate to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden on Dueling Oaks Drive. Please bring your own mat.
REGISTER NOW
These classes are outside and will be canceled for severe weather. Registrants will be notified of cancellation via email by 5 pm the day before class. Call 504.658.4128 or email education@noma.org with any questions.

Public Tours in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden Every Sunday
2025-10-19 10:30 | Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, New Orleans , LA, 70124
NOMA provides guided tours of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden every Saturday. During these tours, you’ll learn about a selection of the 100 large-scale works installed in the garden.
No registration is required. NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden is free and open to all, seven days a week. Tours start at the main entrance gate to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden on Dueling Oaks Drive.

Butterfly Music Series: Amina Figarova
2025-10-19 14:00 - 15:00 | NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts
Experience part of Super Bowl LIX history and enjoy music played on Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste’s custom Yamaha piano on view at NOMA. Batiste performed his moving rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner on this instrument in the Caesars Superdome during the Super Bowl pregame show.
This series celebrates the piano’s residency at NOMA and pays homage to the musical history of New Orleans by inviting musicians to offer intimate sets in NOMA’s Lapis Center for the Arts, which also features bas-relief murals by Enrique Alférez.
This installment of the Butterfly Music Series will feature a live performance by Azerbaijani jazz pianist Amina Figarova.
Attendance is included with museum admission. Preregistration for this event is recommended. Seating is limited and not guaranteed with registration.
Register Now

About Amina Figarova
Amina Figarova was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and graduated from the Baku Conservatory as classical concert pianist. In 1990, she entered the Rotterdam Conservatory to pursue jazz, coming to the United States in 1992 to complete her formal education at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. In 1998 she was invited to the Thelonious Monk Institute’s summer jazz colony in Aspen. She currently lives in New York. Read more at aminafigarova.com.
About the Work
For a limited time, NOMA visitors have the unique opportunity to see the custom piano played by acclaimed musical artist Jon Batiste during the Super Bowl LIX pregame show. On view in the museum’s Lapis Center for the Arts, the vibrant and colorful grand piano features a design by artist and bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, who is Batiste’s wife.
LEARN MORE

Member Sale at the NOMA Museum Shop
2025-10-20 09:00 - 18:00 | NOMA Museum Shop
Start your holiday shopping early with the NOMA Museum Shop Member Sale!
During our biggest sale of the year, NOMA members save 20% on all regularly priced items and get first access to 70% markdowns in the NOMA Museum Shop. Can’t make it in person? Shop online during the member sale and get 20% off NOMA merch and 50% off catalogues.
Exclusions apply. Not combinable with other offers. There are no additional discounts on already marked-down items, as well as consignment merchandise.
Visit the NOMA Museum Shop Website
Not yet a member? Join today at any level to get access to the NOMA Museum Shop’s annual sale.
Become a Member
