Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans celebrates art collector and gallery owner Arthur Roger’s transformational gift of his entire personal art collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art. Spotlighting one of the city’s most groundbreaking contemporary art collections, the exhibition (on view June 23–September 3, 2017) explores the rise of modern and contemporary art in New Orleans. Since its founding in 1978, the Arthur Roger Gallery has been one of New Orleans most exciting venues for contemporary art.
Roger’s personal collection of more than eighty paintings, photographs, and sculptures reflects the gallery’s storied forty-year history as well as Roger’s skill and sophistication as an art collector. Bringing together artworks Roger has collected from the 1970s through today, Pride of Place unfolds as an evolving narrative about place, identity, and belonging in New Orleans’ contemporary art scene over the course of the last four decades. Roger’s personal art collection reflects the city’s dynamic local culture while at the same time responding to more national and international concerns. Incorporating many of the artists that the gallery exhibited over the years, Roger’s collection includes experimental works by regional artists as well as vanguard works made all across the country. The artists included in his collection—many of whose work he purchased long before they became established voices in contemporary art—demonstrate Roger’s trailblazing early engagement with gender, sexuality, and race. Alongside other influential early New Orleans galleries, such as the Orleans Gallery and Galerie Simonne Stern, Roger was instrumental in putting the art of New Orleans into conversation with the broader art world, and into dialogue with the pressing social and political issues of the time, from the AIDS crisis to Hurricane Katrina and the lingering effects of environmental and manmade disasters affecting Louisiana. Roger opened his gallery at a moment when the field of contemporary art was rapidly expanding, incorporating more diverse perspectives. His gallery helped reframe the conversation about regional art, showing how the art of the broader United States—and especially the diverse and eclectic artistic culture of New Orleans—could offer a more expansive and inclusive view of American art and identity.
As one of the first galleries in the South to embrace the work of female artists, some of the first shows at Arthur Roger Gallery were devoted to the early work of such artists as Ida Kohlmeyer and Lin Emery. Other early projects included showing pointedly political papier-mâché sculptures by Willie Birch and exhibiting the work of openly HIV-positive artist Robert Gordy, whose work directly tackled the AIDS crisis. In 1993, the gallery mounted Regarding Masculinity, a group show that included Sue Williams, Kiki Smith, and Marlene McCarthy, and what later became Catherine Opie’s iconic self-portrait series was presented for the first time (see above). Pride of Place puts early works by such artists as Kohlmeyer and Gordy into conversation with some of the most dynamic art being made in the city today by Luiz Cruz Azaceta, Dawn DeDeaux, Lee Deigaard, and Bob Snead, among others. This gift significantly expands NOMA’s current holdings of modern and contemporary art, bringing works of national importance into the collection while also reaffirming the museum’s commitment to the work of local New Orleans artists. Taken together, Roger’s remarkable collection offers an unparalleled glimpse into the history of New Orleans’ evolving art scene, representing a contemporary art collection still in formation as New Orleans continues to gain prestige as an art capital.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated 143-page catalogue that includes an interview between Arthur Roger and iconic American film director and artist John Waters and an essay on the history of contemporary art in New Orleans by NOMA Curator Emeritus William Fagaly.
Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art. Support has been provided by an anonymous donor, Cathy and Morris Bart, and the Ida & Hugh Kohlmeyer Foundation. Additional support provided by the Rita Sue and Alan J. Gold Philanthropic Fund of the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation, John J. Sullivan, Marjorie Cowen, and James Mounger.
Synthesis BB
1983
Ida Kohlmeyer
Mixed media on canvas
68 1/2 x 69 in.
Gift of Arthur Roger, © The Estate of Ida Komlmeyer, 2012.121
Male Head
1983
Robert Gordy
Monotype
49 3/4 x 34 1/4 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © The Estate of Robert Gordy, EL.2016.132.32
Power for Desire-Desire for Power
1987
Robert Colescott
Acrylic on canvas
90 x 114 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Robert Colescott, EL.2016.132.16
Camouflage Self-Portrait
1994
Deborah Kass
Silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas
72 x 72 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Deborah Kass, EL.2016.132.35
Self Portrait/Cutting
1993
Catherine Opie
Chromogenic print
20 x 16 in.
Promised and partial gift of Arthur Roger, © Catherine Opie, 2014.84
An American Family
1991
Willie Birch
Papier-mache and mixed media
68 x 26 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.
Gift of Howard and Judy Tullman in honor of Arthur Roger, © Willie Birch, EL.2016.123
The Red Barge and the Yellow House
2006
Simon Gunning
Oil on canvas
39 3/4 x 72 in.
Gift of Arthur Roger, © Simon Gunning, 2013.43
Museum Plan for New Orleans
2006
Luis Cruz Azaceta
Canvas: charcoal, acrylic, enamel, chair, photos inside plastic bottles, shellac on canvas; Paper and found object: charcoal, acrylic, enamel, shellac on paper and photo mounted to found object
Canvas: 96 x 144 x 12 in.; Paper and found object: 89 x 90 x 10 in.
Gift of Arthur Roger, © Luis Cruz Azaceta, 2014.78
Covered
2008
Radcliffe Bailey
Found fabric
70 x 72 1/2 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Radcliffe Bailey, 2016.132.3
Rush
2009
John Waters
Polyurethane, oil, PVC, plastic
18 x 66 x 30 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © John Waters, EL.2016.132.60
Steady Star
2011
Lee Deigaard
Video
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Lee Deigaard, EL.2016.132.22
I’m a NOLA Art Beast
2013
Bruce Davenport Jr. (Dapper Bruce Lafitte)
Pen and marker on paper
60 x 40 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Dapper Bruce Lafitte, 2016.132.18
Metallica Space Clown Behind Fence in Blue Field
2014
Dawn DeDeaux
Digital drawing on polished acrylic (edition of 3)
88 x 40 in.
Promised Gift of Arthur Roger, © Dawn DeDeaux, 2016.132.19