Crescent Cityscapes Images of New Orleans from the Permanent Collection

Knute Heldner, French Quarter Rooftops, 1923, Oil on canvas, Roger Houston Ogden Collection

March 15 - July 13, 2025

Since its beginning, the City of New Orleans has been both a subject and a muse to generations of artists. This exhibition will draw primarily from the permanent collection of Ogden Museum of Southern Art to show how artists have portrayed the Crescent City through drawings, paintings, photographs and prints. From 19^th century street scenes to contemporary abstractions, these works show the deep and lasting influence of the built environment and natural light of New Orleans upon the visual arts.

Much has been written about New Orleans impact on literature, music, film and food. And yes, New Orleans has punched above its weight class in all of those disciplines. This exhibition, however, considers the city’s impact on the visual arts, particularly as a muse for artists themselves. In this selection of works, it is not the people of New Orleans that take center stage (although they certainly play a supporting role), but the city itself. It is that slant of light through thick humid air, the stunning vista seen through lacy ironwork, the cracked sidewalks of urban entropy and the shock of new construction in the midst of history. It is the climbing vines and persistence of nature that threatens daily to swallow the built environment and the leaning buildings saturated in Caribbean color. It is this tenuous and tenacious settlement, surrounded on all sides by water. It is the moveable feast that is New Orleans. The city itself is both setting and protagonist in this visual narrative, told by generations of artists past and present, and hopefully generations to come.