Where They At?

Partners N Crime by Aubrey Edwards

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, in its mission to broaden the knowledge, appreciation and understanding of the culture of the South, has partnered with Aubrey Edwards and Alison Fensterstock to offer Where They At:New Orleans Hip-Hop and Bounce in Words and Pictures.


Ms Tee by Aubrey Edwards

As an introduction, on April 20th the Ogden screened Ya Heard Me? (2007), the definitive bounce documentary by Matt Miller and Stephen Thomas. The screening was well attended, and was followed by a discussion with Miller, Thomas, Edwards and Fensterstock, as well as producers John and Glenda Robert of All Good in the Hood fame.



Photo by David Houston


The exhibition opened on April 22nd, block-party style, with DJ Jubilee performing in the atrium of Goldring Hall. Over five hundred attendees danced on the staircases and browsed the galleries. It was a night not to be forgotten, a night only New Orleans can produce.


DJ Jubilee and the Ogden's Kisharon Green
Photo by David Houston

The exhibition in pictures includes over forty portraits from the bounce and hip-hop community of New Orleans, taken by Brooklyn and New Orleans based music photograper, Aubrey Edwards. Also included are twenty images of where it all happened: clubs like Blue Gardenia, Club Fabulous, Big Man Lounge and Ceasar's; parties like Katey Red's Anniversary, Take Fo's Anniversary and Teen Bounce Night at the Chatroom.

Big Freedia by Aubrey Edwards


The exhibition in words includes excerpts from interviews conducted by Alison Fensterstock of the players in the bounce scene: artists and DJs, family members and archivists, producers and record store owners. Fensterstock has also compiled playlists of the music combined with her interviews, offered on Ipods and Ipads.

Collection of Loren Phillips Fouroux

The third component of this exhibition is the ephemera. Two galleries are filled with archival images and artifacts, mainly drawn from the collections of Sthaddeus "Polo Silk" Terrell and Loren K. Phillips Fouroux. Representing over two decades of bounce history, the cases in these rooms include gems like DJ Irv's turntable, the famous "red tape" of Tucker and Irv's Wha Dey At? release, a No Limits Records tour jacket ('Bout It. 'Bout It.), Da Rude issues, badges, buttons, flyers, and amazing candid shots by Terrell and Fouroux. One corner is devoted completely to Bobby Marchan. Another wall lists those artists who have passed away.



Collection of Loren Phillips Fouroux

Where They At? represents several years of research and production by Fensterstock and Edwards. The respect and reverence in which they approached the subject shows clearly, not only in the professional quality of the work, but in their deferment of attention from themselves and toward the community, in their celebration and inclusion of everyone involved. This is the real deal, an exhibition that hopes to shed light on an often overlooked genre of New Orleans music, a genre directly descended from the call-and-response chants of Mardi Gras Indian music and the second-line tradition.


Polo Silk and Mother by David Houston

"Where they at?", you ask. At the Ogden. Come see.

The exhibition will close on August 1, 2009.

Will Henry Stevens Portrait

Will Henry Stevens, 1922
Collection of the Ogden Museum

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art houses a collection of over four hundred works by the late Will Henry Stevens in its permanent collection. While working with a curatorial panel for the current exhibition, Will Henry Stevens: Louisiana Waterways, I found this studio portrait of Will Henry in the archives. Dated 1922 and titled "Will Henry Moses," this photograph was donated to the Ogden by Stevens' daughter, the artist Janet Stevens McDowell.

Barry Hannah (1942 - 2010)

Barry Hannah, 1997, gelatin silver print by David Spielman
Gift of the artist in honor of J. Richard Gruber

On Monday March 1, 2010, Barry Hannah passed away in Oxford, Mississippi. He was sixty-seven. A giant in the rich literary tradition of the South, his influence is not only evidenced in the critical praise his work has received over the past thirty-plus years, but also in the heartfelt outpouring of memorials and remebrances by writers in the past few days. The following are just a few examples that stand out: The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Oxford American.

In honor of Barry Hannah, his portrait from David Spielman's Southern Writers series has been placed in the atrium of Goldring Hall. Over a period of 120 days in 1997, David Spielman photographed 72 Southern writers, including Barry Hannah. The complete series was shown at the Ogden Museum in 2007. In December of 2009, Spielman donated thirty-four prints from this series, Hannah's included, to the Ogden Museum in honor of J. Richard Gruber, who retired as Director in November.

New Southern Photography: Michael Meads

Cockfighter's Son, 1992
Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Michael Meads is a painter, photographer and teacher born in Eastaboga, Alabama in 1966. Originally intended as studies for his paintings and drawings, Meads’ photographs document his friends and acquaintances. As a result, they enable the viewer an intimate look at his immediate world, and document his community with a clear sense of place and time.

Raised in the heart of the Bible Belt, Meads was drawn to the difference and decadence of New Orleans since, as a boy, he first heard a Baptist minister warn of its wickedness from a radio broadcast. In 1998, he made New Orleans his home. The floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of his work in 2005, and now Meads divides his time between New Orleans and his studio in the arid landscape of rural New Mexico.

This photograph is a vintage cibachrome print from the Eastaboga series. Twenty-two works from this series are featured in the current exhibition of recent acquisitions, New Southern Photography. They represent a sampling of a much larger body of Meads’ photographic work given to the Ogden Museum through two donors, J. Michael Parish and Charles Canada. Charles Canada has also donated drawings and paintings from every period of Meads' career.

Artist's Studio: Thornton Dial, Sr.

In March of 2007, the Ogden Museum opened Ogun Meets Vulcan: Iron Sculptors of Alabama in H. H. Richardson's Patrick F. Taylor Library. The exhibition was realized through a successful partnership with Georgia's Tinwood Alliance, and featured the work of Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Joe Minter, Ronald Lockett and Charlie Lucas.

Prior to the exhibition, Tinwood's founder and curator, Bill Arnett, took Rick Gruber and David Houston to several of the artists' studios, including Thornton Dial. Born in 1928, Dial did not start making art in earnest until after his retirement from a career welding for the Pullman Rail Company. Since then, his work has moved beyond the realm of the "visionary" and "outsider" labels. His three dimensional work pushes the boundaries of painting and sculpture, placing him firmly in the dialogue of contemporary fine art. As Dial says, "Art ain't about paint. It ain't about canvas. It's about ideas. I have found how to get my ideas out and I won't stop. I got ten thousand left."

These shots were taken by David Houston with a Leica M5 at Thornton's home, outside of Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 2007.

Bill Arnett, Rick Gruber and Thornton Dial's brother.

José Bedia's Altar / Installation

Photo by Richard McCabe.


On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, José Bedia entered the Ogden Museum to create a sight-specific installation for his exhibition opening the following day. It was his fifty-first birthday. Prior to his arrival, we asked what materials he would need for the installation. He requested two things: a bucket of black paint and a bucket of water. In less than three hours, Bedia created a work of striking significance in the context of New Orleans' hosting of ¡Sí Cuba!, a collaborative venture between museums, universities, galleries, and other arts organizations across New Orleans celebrating Cuban art, music and culture.


Photo by Sue Strachan


Photo by Sue Strachan.

The installation includes a dark figure painted directly onto the gallery wall, representing Castro's Cuba. On the floor, in the center or base of the work, is a Palo medicine bundle, representing both Cuba's cultural and spiritual ties to Angola and Bedia's ritual creation of the altar/installation. The floor becomes the ocean turning the baseboards into the horizon. A dog figure, often used to symbolize native cultures, sails away attached to the dark figure with chains. The boat contains cigars and trails an Iberian trane in its wake. This can be seen as the exodus of traditional Cuban culture from the island. Kevin Power, in his definitive essay José Bedia: Field Work in the Human Soul, says of the boat figure: "It speaks both of the way in which the Cuban immigrant drags his traditions along behind him and of the impossibility of ever escaping his past."


Photo by Sue Strachan.

José Bedia's exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans. The gallery is currently exhibiting Fragment of Journeys, new work by José Bedia. The Ogden exhibition and installation will run through April 11, 2010.

Sneek Peek: Thomas Sully

Mrs. FitzGerald and her Daughter Mathilda, Thomas Sully, c.1857
Ogden Museum of Southern Art

In December of 2009, Dr. James Michael and Carolyn Fortino of Gretna Louisiana donated two works by the 19th century American painter, Thomas Sully. During his lifetime, Thomas Sully was one of the most prominent portrait painters in the United States. Born 1783 in England to the actors Matthew and Sarah Sully, Sully emigrated to Richmond, Virginia in 1792. Two years later, the family moved to Charleston, South Carolina. At the age of 12, he began studies with his brother-in-law Jean Belzons, a French miniaturist. He returned to Richmond in 1799 to study painting under his brother, Lawrence Sully. He began a professional career as a portrait painter in 1801 at the age of 18. In 1806 he moved to Philadelphia, where he spent the remainder of his life. His portraits included Marquis de Lafayette, James Polk, Andrew Jackson, and Queen Victoria, considered the highlight of his career and painted in London at the request of the St. George Society in 1837-1838.

Thomas Sully

Thomas Sully the painter was the great-uncle of the New Orleans based architect, also named Thomas Sully. Thomas Sully the architect was born in Mississippi City, Mississippi in 1855. He opened offices in New Orleans in 1881. His realized designs included the original Whitney Building, the St. Charles Hotel, and many large residencies on upper St. Charles Avenue, including the Picard House. Outside of New Orleans, his designs include the Vicksburg Hotel in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Shreveport Charity Hospital and the Caffery Sugar Hill in St. Mary Parish.

Portrait of a Young Woman (Mrs. FitzGerald) 1855, Thomas Sully

Ogden Museum of Southern Art

The two paintings by Thomas Sully generously donated by Dr. and Mrs. Fortino were originally commissioned by Colonel Thomas FitzGerald of Philadelphia. Colonel FitzGerald was an acclaimed orator, publisher, philanthropist and founder of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team. He wrote many successful plays, and was the first controller in the public school system to insist successfully on the introduction of music into the public schools. He stumped for Abraham Lincoln, who became a friend. Lincoln appointed the Colonel's son, Riter Fitzgerald, as consul to Moscow.

Colonel Fitzgerald's large collection of paintings contained fine examples of many American and European painters including Sully, Neagle and Hamilton. He offered the collection to the Academy of Fine Art with the requirement that they be placed in a dedicated gallery to be called The FitzGerald Collection, but the offer was refused due to lack of room. Upon his death, the collection was divided among the family.

Portrait of a Young Woman (Mrs. FitzGerald) is an unfinished oil study of Colonel Fitzgerald's wife painted in 1855. It was acquired by the Fortinos from Christie's East, New York in 1997. Mrs. FitzGerald and her Daughter Mathilda is a fully finished painting. The date of completion is unknown, but we know that it was shown in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine art's Annual Exhibition in 1862. The painting was acquired by the Fortinos from Sotheby's New York in 1999. Mrs. Fitzgerald and her Daughter Mathilda was previously owned by Riter FitzGerald and eventually the sitter's great-granddaughter before going up for auction. These paintings were first re-united, study and portrait, in the Fortino's collection. The Ogden is honored to become home to these historic portraits.

Rockmore's Preservation Hall Portraits

Bill Matthews, Preservation Hall
1964, oil on canvas

If you've spent any amount of time, as I have, in conversation with the old-line bohemians of the French Quarter, you've heard many tales of the late Noel Rockmore. He was a regular patron of the lower-Quarter artist's cafes and bars central to that social scene, and he held court with no less intrigue and charisma than his fellow bohemian, Tennessee Williams. Arriving in "the last frontier of Bohemia" in 1959, Rockmore discovered the place of his dreams, a place that allowed him to both portray the fantasy and decay so central to his personal aesthetic, and to do so by painting what was there, without embellishment.

Born in New York City in 1928, he had both lived in France and studied violin by the age of five. He and his sister, Deborah studied briefly at Julliard. By 1939, painting and art had become his passion. By 16, he was copying Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum. By 18, he was studying at the Art Students League.

In 1948, Joseph Hirshhorn purchased Rockmore's Self-Portrait with a Model. At the same time, his style was being defined through a series of seventy-five drawings of Bowery bums. He depicted these crushing figures without social comment, a style he continued throughout his career. He spent time in the Natural History Museum painting monkeys and mummies. Several years were spent depicting Coney Island through drawings, etchings and paintings.

In 1951, Rockmore married and honeymooned in Mexico. During the trip, his car hit a cow, and much to the dismay of his bride, rather than seeking help, he spent time sketching the dying bovine. This obsession with death and decay continued in his next major series of three hundred circus paintings and drawings. For several weeks he travelled with the circus, and found himself overwhelmed with the thundering throngs of humans and animals, all in various states of decline.

Throughout the fifties, his work matured and continued to meet growing critical success. The Whitney Museum exhibited his work in 1956. In 1958, Hirshhorn bought nine more paintings, all of which are now in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.


Billie and DeDe Pierce, Preservation Hall
Oil on canvas, 1963.

A friend recommended that Rockmore visit New Orleans in 1959, and arranged a studio for him in the home of Paul Ninas. By 1963, Rockmore had executed over 350 portraits of musicians at Preservation Hall. Ben Jaffe, bassist, creative director and proprietor heir of Preservation Hall, told me recently that his father would often purchase the portraits painted in Preservation Hall. It was a kind of steady income for Rockmore during his early years in New Orleans.

The Ogden Museum is proud to have five portraits from the Preservation Hall series in its collection, all gifts from the Roger H. Ogden Collection. The two works pictured above are currently exhibited on the fourth floor of Goldring Hall.

Orcenith Lyle Bongé (1929 - 2009)

Photo by David Houston

The Ogden Museum is mourning the loss of a talented artist, great Southerner, friend to the Museum, and just a damn fine human being. Lyle Bongé passed away in his hometown of Biloxi on Monday, December 7, 2009.

Father Orcenith Lyle Bongé, a courtly citizen of Harrison County,
God-Hep-Us-Mississippi, is the signal representative of a wild eyed,
smooth-talking tribe who could charm the skin off a snake. -- Jonathan
Williams

Born in 1929, Lyle was the son of painters Archie and Dusti Bongé. Dusti was a native of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and that state's first true Modernist painter. Walter Anderson was the best man at their wedding. Lyle attended several schools including University of Southern Mississippi, University of Mexico, and the short-lived but highly influential Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He served two years in the Korean War, where he ran a darkroom. He began his career in photography after returning home to Biloxi in the early 50s. Over a span of thirty years beginning in 1955, Lyle amassed over forty-thousand negatives from shooting Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He is also known for his photo-abstractions. An accomplished sailor, he broke the world's record for single-handed cross-Gulf passage under sail in 1968. He wrote cookbooks, was a tree-topper, bank director and landlord. He also created metal sculpture.


In the foreword to The Photographs of Lyle Bongé (Jargon Society, 1982), A.D. Coleman said, "[T]here are many sides to Lyle Bongé, and a plethora of strange and curious tales to be told by and about him." No doubt the stories will continue to be told and told again about this rare gem of Zen-boho bodacity native to the Mississippi coast.


In the clipping below from a late-40s Black Mountain College's student newspaper, a young Lyle Bongé is described thusly:

He has red hair and sports a "French" mustache. He is noted for wearing a monocle on his left eye. This adds to his distinction greatly. Lyle possesses some strange but amusing hobbies. He collects skulls (from old graveyards) and animal skulls in the woods. To prove his statement that he loves "danger as a stimulant," he once lived in New York on $1.50 and a bottle of stimulant. He ate only one meal a day and that was with friends. Another hobby is sailing alone in a storm in his boat. Others include travelling, writing prose and poetry and he loves all modern art forms.

Black Mountain Student Paper
Circa 1948


A portfolio of four of Lyle's mescaline-influenced photographs titled "The Search for Vision" was included in Aperture 6:3, under the direction of Minor White. The Jargon Society published two books of his photographs, The Sleep of Reason: Lyle Bonge's Ultimate Ash-Hauling Mardi Gras Photographs (1974) and The Photographs of Lyle Bongé (1982). His photographic works are included in the permanent collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Pensacola Art Museum, the Historic New Orleans Collection and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. His sculptures have been exhibited at Loyola University in New Orleans and the George Ohr Museum in Biloxi.

Jonathan Traviesa's Portraits

Tony 2009 by Jonathan Traviesa

In the first part of the 20th century, August Sander stated:

I am not concerned with providing commonplace
photographs like those made in the finer large-scale studios of the city, but
simple, natural portraits that show the subjects in an environment corresponding
to their own individuality, portraits that claim the right to be evaluated as
works of art and to be used as wall ornaments ... It is not my intention either to
criticize or to describe these people, but to create a piece of history with my
pictures.

Sharon 2004 by Jonathan Traviesa

With this goal, he began his most significant body of work, Citizens of the Twentieth Century, a groundbreaking series of black-and-white photographs that paved the way for such works as Irving Penn's Worlds in a Small Room and Richard Avedon's Portraits of the American West. His influence can be seen down the line from Walker Evans to Diane Arbus.

Heather 2003 by Jonathan Traviesa

The Sander influence can be clearly seen in the cool, spare style of Jonathan Traviesa's series, Portraits, currently hanging on the fourth floor of the Ogden Museum. His simple approach to the subjects allows a deeply psychological reading of the image, not just a caricature of a character, but a living personality. In the foreword to Traviesa's book, I believe New Orleans photographer, Richard Sexton, provided an eloquent and succinct critique of the series:

Jonathan’s methodology is about as simple and
straightforward as it gets. Using a Rolleiflex twin-lens camera passed on to him
from his father, loaded with black and white film, he solicits appointments to
photograph his subjects at their home or studio. The settings are outdoors,
keeping the lighting simple and allowing the context of New Orleans to creep
into the frame. His subjects are almost always photographed full figure, and,
around them, filling in the composition, we get a glimpse of where and how they
live. And it is this context that offers familiar fragments of New Orleans: the
decrepit shutter, a lush drape of tropical foliage, a porch swing, a backdrop of
weatherboards, or a beer can either left over from the night before or perhaps
currently in use. The remarkable thing is how natural and comfortable these
individuals fit into their landscape. Whether by fortune or birthplace or the
culmination of a long and circuitous migratory path, they all seem to be where
they belong.

Benjamin 1998 by Jonathan Traviesa

On December 10th during Ogden After Hours, Jonathan Traviesa will be signing his new book, Portraits: Photographs in New Orleans 1998 - 2009. Thirty-seven photographs featured in the publication are currently exhibited on the fourth floor of the Ogden's Goldring Hall.

Jonathan by Jonathan Traviesa

Justin Forbes' Road Trip

Justin Forbes' Road Trip 1996

Gift of The Michael Brown and Linda Green Collection.

Stanley Staniski's exhibition currently at the Ogden, On the Road with Benny Andrews, is devoted partly to Route 66 and the fading remnants of roadside Americana, leftover ephemera from the rise of American car culture. The themes of migration, Americana and the Route 66 road trip bring to mind another body of work in the Ogden's collection, the work of Justin Forbes.

Justin Forbes' Neo- American Gothic 1996

Gift of the Michael Brown and Linda Green Collection.

Justin's highly narrative paintings tell the story of his journey from LA to New Orleans, of his life in the underground of the South and the Southwest. They attempt brutally honest portraits and iconic images of time and place. They often succeed.

For nearly twenty-five years, Justin has been working as a freelance artist. His clients and collectors include Larry Flynt, Epitaph Records, Tabasco, Santa Cruz Skateboards, Walt Disney, ESPN, Lallapalooza, Dragon Stout, actress Sela Ward and Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin. He has several paintings in the Ogden Museum's Permanent Collection.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Justin Forbes boarded a bus from the Superdome that dropped him off in Denton, Texas, where he remains today.

Lyle Bonge's Ultimate Ash Hauling Photographs

Copyright 1964 Lyle Bonge. Untitled gelatin silver print.

" If you can kill a snake with it, it aint art." -- Lyle Bonge

Photo by David Houston.

Lyle Bonge started taking photographs in his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. In the late 1940s, Bonge studies at the short-lived but highly influential Black Mountain College, where he roomed with famed essayist/poet/publisher Jonathan Williams. Since 1955, Bonge has amassed over 40,000 negatives of Mardi Gras, some of which were published in Jargon Press' 1977 publication of his photographs, The Sleep of Reason: Lyle Bonge's Ultimate Ash Hauling Photographs. His works are contained in private and public collections, including the Mississippi Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Pensacola Art Museum and, of course, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He still lives in the Biloxi house built by his mother and father, artists Dusti and Archie Bonge. Dusti was Mississippi's first true Modernist, showing at Betty Parson's Gallery in the late 50s. Beyond his career as a photographer, Lyle has been a boat builder, bank director and tree topper.

On the Road with Benny Andrews

On the Road with Benny Andrews by Stanley Staniski

In the spring of 2004, Benny Andrews initiated a project in conjunction with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art to explore the migrant experience in America through a series of annual journeys culminating in three exhibitions in New Orleans and New York. These journeys would focus on three aspects of the American migrant experience: the 1930s Dust Bowl migration along Route 66, the forced march of native peoples along the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and the 20th century African-American exodus from the South to New York, Chicago and Detroit. Noted photographer and filmmaker, Stanley Staniski, was invited to document Benny's research for The Migrant Series, traveling the backroads and by-ways of America with this iconic Southern artist.


Benny Andrews and Stanley Staniski at the Grand Canyon
Photo by Ned Traver

Staniski had worked with the Ogden before, creating films about artists including William Christenberry, Will Henry Stevens and William Dunlap. During this time, he initiated his own series of photographs resulting from his journeys with Benny. Of the project, Staniski says:

On the highest level, we were trying to understand history and what migrants went through on their various treks. On the most basic level we were three guys in a car roaming around, following our noses, looking for whatever we could find, with Benny leading the way.

Benny Andrews and Rick Gruber
Photo by Stanley Staniski

Director J. Richard Gruber of the Ogden was involved at the inception of The Migrant Series, as well, and did some travelling with the team, himself. Writing about Benny and Stanley's journeys, Dr. Gruber recalls:

Traveling lightly and economically by car, in Andrews' Volvo station wagon, their extended journeys of exploration are reminiscent of earlier (and often mythic) American road trips, including those by 20th century artists and photographers such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Robert Rauschenberg and William Eggleston, and writers like Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck (whose book, The Grapes of Wrath, directly inspired Andrews' Route 66 trip).

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, in 2006 Benny expanded the initial parameters of The Migrant Series to include the diaspora of the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He was never able to finish his vision, though. Benny Andrews died of cancer on November 10, 2006.

Staniski continued to be inspired by his journeys with Benny, expanding his photographic series in the spirit of those travels. When writing about his series, Staniski says:

Other photographic trips grew out of those with Benny, and while I made photographs along roads (Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia) other than the specific migrant routes of Benny’s interest, for me they are all of the same series, perhaps they are part of his legacy.

July 4th, Avalon Theatre, McLean, Texas. Photo by Stanley Sataniski

On October 3, 2009, the Ogden Museum opened the exhibition Stanley Staniski: On the Road with Benny Andrews. The exhibition includes thirty-two images, chosen by Chief Curator David Houston from a larger body of work resulting from and inspired by Staniski's travels with Benny Andrews.

Stanley Staniski. Photo by Cheryl Gerber


Lea Barton, Rick Gruber, William Christenberry, Stanley Staniski and Ken Barton. Photo by Cheryl Gerber


Stanley Staniski, Richard Sexton and Richard McCabe. Photo by Cheryl Gerber.

Photo by Cheryl Gerber


Stanley Staniski and Massumeh Farhad, Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries

New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy

On Saturday, October 3, 2009, Jose Torres-Tama and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans released New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy: The Artwork of Jose Torres-Tama. This catalogue documents the exhibition of the same name shown at The Ogden Museum and Dillard University's Fine Art Gallery in 2008. Including an introduction by the Ogden's chief curator, David Houston, essays by Torres-Tama and creole historian, Keith Weldon Medley, the catalogue focuses on eighteen pastel drawings of fifteen historical figures belonging to the New Orleans community known as the gens de coleur libres.


Photo by Cheryl Gerber

During the Art for Art's Sake events on Saturday, Torres-Tama and Medley signed copies of the catalogue in a gallery filled with Torres-Tama's pastel portraits of these influential and relevant historical figures, including Marie Laveau, Basile Barres, Edmond Dede, Rose Nicaud and others.

Photo by Cheryl Gerber

Bradley Sumrall, J. Richard Gruber, Jose Torres-Tama and Keith Weldon Medley

Photo by Cheryl Gerber

Jose with wife, Dr. Claudia Copeland, and two sons, Darius and Diego

Photo by Cheryl Gerber.

New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy is available at the Ogden's Museum Shop.