NEW ORLEANS –  With the health and safety of its supporters in mind, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has announced that it will forgo this year’s Magnolia Ball fundraiser, originally scheduled for June 6, and transition to an online silent auction. Bidding will take place online Monday, June 22 through Sunday, June 28 at 5 p.m.

The online Magnolia Ball silent auction will showcase the work of 50 regional artists and vendors, and proceeds will benefit both the Museum and the participating artists. The auction celebrates the Museum’s current exhibitions, Entwined: Ritual Wrapping and Binding in Contemporary Southern Art and Revelations: Recent Photography Acquisitions. 

The growing artist list includes David Armentor, LCP Clay, Anita Cooke, Karen deClouet, William Dunlap, William Guion, Kappa Horn, Sarah House, Susan Ireland, Jupiter LaLa, Emily Lovejoy, David McCarty, Juliet Meeks, Nonney Oddlokken, The Red M Studio, Frances Rodriguez, Jennifer Shaw and Victoria Smith Ceramics.

A link to the online auction will be made available in the coming weeks. And leading up to the event, the Museum will host a series of online artist talks and studio tours, highlighting participating artists and their work.

“Magnolia Ball is an event that our community looks forward to each summer, and while we’re unable to gather this year, we are excited to host an online silent auction and support Southern artists,” says William Pittman Andrews, Ogden Museum Executive Director.

For more information about the online Magnolia Ball silent auction, contact Melissa Kenyon, Ogden Museum Director of Marketing and Experience, at mkenyon@ogdenmuseum.org.

ENTWINED

“I follow my hands, and they often reveal the answers to the questions that I am asking myself while I explore the material I am working with.” – Sonya Yong James

Drawing inspiration from the traditions of various cultures – Haitian Voudou, Appalachian broom-making, Calabrian silk production, Peruvian rope coiling, Congo Nkisi – the contemporary Southern artists in Entwined engage wrapping and binding as a symbolic aesthetic device, and often as a ritual practice within their work. 

The technique and the symbolism of wrapping and binding in the work of these artists is as varied as the artists themselves. From the visionary allegorical paintings of the female form by Susan Jamison to the abstract textile sculptures of Sarah Zapata, there exists a common thread of ritual. For some, it is the ritual of repetitive laborious handwork. For others, it is a ritual and spiritual act of creation. Through wrapping, painting, weaving, coiling, drawing or knotting, each artist binds their own unique and thoroughly contemporary vision to an ancient, universal and very human practice.

Entwined features works by Friendswood Brooms, Jeffrey Cook, Sonya Yong James, Susan Jamison, Sharon Kopriva, Kristin Meyers, Susan Plum, Ashley Pridmore, Elizabeth Shannon, Ed Williford and Sarah Zapata.

This exhibition is curated by Bradley Sumrall, Ogden Museum Curator of the Collection.

REVELATIONS

Revelations: Recent Photography Acquisitions features a selection of photographs made from the early 20th century to the present and added to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s permanent collection over the last decade.

With over 70 photographs featured, Revelations represents a wide range of processes and techniques made by a diverse group of 39 photographers.

Revelations celebrates regional identity in parallel with the South’s ongoing contributions to a global conversation on photography in the visual arts.

Photographers included in the exhibition: Keith Calhoun, William Christenberry, Lee Deigaard, Walker Evans, Debbie Fleming Caffrey, Aaron Hardin, Lewis W. Hine, Birney Imes, Dorothea Lange, Sally Mann, Andrew Moore, Chandra McCormick, RaMell Ross, Ernest Withers and more.

This exhibition is curated by Richard McCabe, Ogden Museum Curator of Photography.

OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART

Located in the vibrant Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana since 1999, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art welcomes 85,000 visitors annually to experience and learn about the artists and art movements of the American South. It is home to a collection of more than four thousand works, making it the largest and most comprehensive repository dedicated to Southern art in the nation, with particular strength in the genres of Self-Taught art, Regionalism, photography and contemporary art. The Museum is further recognized for its original exhibitions, public events and educational programs, which examine the development of visual art alongside Southern traditions of music, literature and local craft. Among its recent exhibitions are Memory is a Strange Bell: The Art of William Christenberry (2019-2020) Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé (2019), New Southern Photography (2018-2019), The Whole Drum Will Sound: Women in Southern Abstraction (2018), and Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection, presented by The Helis Foundation (2017-2018).