Ogden Museum of Southern Art
925 Camp St
New Orleans, LA 70130
504.539.9650 | HOURS
925 Camp St
New Orleans, LA 70130
504.539.9650 | HOURS
The Helis Foundation Art Prize for Best in Show Winner: Cristina Molina, The Memory of Miss River, 2023, Multi-channel video installation, Variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist
(NEW ORLEANS, LA) – Ogden Museum of Southern Art announced today the award winners selected for the 2024 edition of Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation, now on view at the Museum through October 13, 2024. Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation is the Museum’s annual juried exhibition, this year’s showcase features 41 works by 37 artists from over one-thousand submissions. The 2024 guest juror, Lauren Haynes, Head Curator, Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island, has selected the following artists as award winners:
With support from The Helis Foundation, Ogden Museum honors these four artists who
highlight some of the most compelling works in the exhibition. The four awards come with grants and special recognition at the Museum. Cristina Molina, the recipient of the lead award, The Helis Foundation Art Prize, will receive an unrestricted grant of $5,000.
2024 juror Lauren Haynes shares, “I was truly honored to be selected as the juror for the 2024 edition of Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation. I enjoyed having the opportunity to see over 1,100 artworks by 367 artists living and working in Louisiana.”
The full roster of 2024 artists includes:
Ogden Museum first launched Louisiana Contemporary in 2012 to engage artists living in Louisiana and to highlight the dynamism of art practice throughout the state. Since the inaugural exhibition 13 years ago, Ogden Museum has shown works by 569 artists, making Louisiana Contemporary an important moment in the national arts calendar to recognize and experience the spectrum and vitality of artistic voices emanating from New Orleans and in art communities across Louisiana.
Louisiana Contemporary is made possible by presenting sponsor, The Helis Foundation.
About Cristina Molina
Cristina Molina is a visual artist who hails from the subtropics of Miami and currently lives and works in New Orleans—two environmentally precarious cities that have influenced her research on identity, loss and disappearing landscapes. Spanning video installation, photography and performance, Molina’s artwork is set amidst vulnerable terrains both real and imagined. Using the language of magical realism, her works centralize little-known narratives to upend dominant histories
Molina’s projects are typically collaborative and often include the participation of The Crystal Efemmes—a myth-building collective that produces immersive installations and performances with feminist agendas. Parallel to her individual practice, Molina has a creative investment in community building. From 2014-20 she was a member of the New Orleans artist-run project, The Front; Where she curated artwork and co-organized The Front’s annual film festival. In 2023, Molina co-founded Camp Street Studios and The Parlour Gallery, an artist-run production and exhibition space in the Arts District of Downtown New Orleans. Cristina Molina is Professor of New Media + Animation and Gallery Director at Southeastern Louisiana University where she received the 2018 President’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity and was the recipient of the Viola Brown Endowed Professorship in Visual and Dramatic Arts from 2020-22.
Molina is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Scholar Award, the Artist in Residence in Everglades Fellowship (2019) and the Joan Mitchell Center Residency (2021). Her projects have been supported by the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The National Performance Network and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2020, Molina was one of the 61 artists selected for the survey exhibition State of the Art at Crystal Bridges Museum. Her work has been featured at institutions such as the New Orleans Museum of Art, Project Row Houses Houston, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Polk Museum, the New Orleans Film Festival and the Syros International Film Festival.
About Lauren Haynes
Lauren Haynes is the Head Curator of Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island. Prior to joining the Governors Island Arts, Haynes was the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Queens Museum in Queens, New York; Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; and Director of Artist Initiatives and Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas. Haynes led the inaugural visual arts programming for the Momentary when it opened to the public in February 2020. Haynes’s recent curatorial projects include Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love (co-curator, 2023); The Power of Portraiture: Recent Acquisitions (2022); Beyond the Surface: Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection (2022); Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now (co-curator, 2022); Kenny Rivero: The Floor is Crooked (2021); Crystal Bridges at 10 (2021); Sarah Cain: In Nature (2021); State of the Art 2020 (co-curator, 2020); and The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art (co-curator, 2018).
Prior to joining Crystal Bridges, Haynes spent nearly a decade at The Studio Museum in Harlem. As a specialist in African-American contemporary art, Haynes curated dozens of exhibitions at the Studio Museum and contemporary art institutions in New York. Haynes serves on the board of the Association of Art Museum Curators and on the visiting committee for the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Haynes was a 2018 Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow and a recipient of a 2020 ArtTable New Leadership Award. In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed Haynes to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, on which she currently serves.
About Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Located in the vibrant Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana since 1999 and open to the public since 2003, Ogden Museum of Southern Art invites visitors to experience and learn about the artists and culture of the American South. Ogden Museum is home to a collection with almost five thousand works, making it the largest publicly available 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, culinary heritage and craft and design.
Ogden Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Museum is located at 925 Camp Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. For more information visit ogdenmuseum.org or call 504.539.9650.