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
Louisiana Contemporary 2021 The Helis Foundation Art prize for Best in Show Winner: Diana Abouchacra, Material as Rediscovered Memory I, 2020, Intaglio, 20 x 26 inches, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of Hisham and Dana Abouchacra
Ogden Museum of Southern Art first launched Louisiana Contemporary, Presented by The Helis Foundation in 2012, to establish a vehicle that would bring to the fore the work of artists living in Louisiana and highlight the dynamism of art practice throughout the state. Since the inaugural exhibition over ten years ago, Ogden Museum has shown works by 489 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.
This statewide, juried exhibition promotes the contemporary art practices in the state of Louisiana, provides an exhibition space for the exposition of living artists’ work and engages a contemporary audience that recognizes the vibrant visual arts culture of Louisiana and the role of New Orleans as a rising, international art center.
This year’s guest juror is Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
SUPPORT Louisiana Contemporary 2022
Host Committee:
Eclectic Home
Jessie & Beau Haynes
Stuart B. Hurt
Roger H. Ogden & Ken Barnes
Charles D. Urstadt & David Bernard
Michael Wilkinson
The Louisiana Contemporary, Presented by the Helis Foundation annual juried art competition is open to all artists 18 years and older residing in the state of Louisiana (must be able to provide proof of a valid Louisiana address). All work must be original and completed within the last two years (2020-2022).
LEARN MORE AND SUBMIT ART WORKIMPORTANT DATES:
Wednesday, April 13 – Louisiana Contemporary 2022 Call for Entries opens
Friday, May 27 – Louisiana Contemporary 2022 Call for Entries closes
Week of June 6 – Applicants receive notification email that LAC 2022 Jurying process has begun
Week of July 4 – Applicants receive notification email of LAC 2022 accepted artists
Friday, July 22 – All accepted work must be received at the Museum
Saturday, August 6 – Opening of Louisiana Contemporary 2022 Exhibition
Sunday, January 8, 2023 – Closing of Louisiana Contemporary 2022 Exhibition
Questions? Please contact exhibitions@ogdenmuseum.org or call 504-539-9622.
Image courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Image photographed by Travis Fullerton.
Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2000 – 2017). She has served as director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995-2000) and a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1995). In 2000, she served as one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
During her tenure at the CAMH, Cassel Oliver organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Cinema Remixed & Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970 with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012). She has also mounted significant survey exhibitions for Benjamin Patterson, Donald Moffett, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jennie C. Jones, Angel Otero and Annabeth Rosen.
Her 2018 debut exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was the five-decade survey of work by Howardena Pindell entitled, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen. The exhibition, co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, was mounted for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and named one of the most influential of the decade. At the VMFA, Cassel Oliver organized the exhibition, Cosmologies from the Tree of Life that featured over thirty newly acquired works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Most recently, she opened the exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse, to critical acclaim. The exhibition opened in Richmond May, 2021 and is currently touring through January, 2023.
Cassel Oliver is the recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship (2007); a fellowship from the Center of Curatorial Leadership (2009); the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award (2011); the Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Foundation-to-Life Fellowship at Hunter College (2016) and the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University (2018). From 2016-17, she was a Senior Fellow in Curatorial Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, in Spring 2020, she served with Hamza Walker as a Fellow for Viewpoints at the University of Texas at Austin.
Most recently, Cassel Oliver was named the recipient of the 2022 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and the awardee of the College Arts Association’s 2022 Excellence in Diversity Award. In March, 2022, she accepted the Alain Locke International Art Award from the Detroit Institute for the Arts.
Cassel Oliver holds an Executive MBA from Columbia University, New York; an M.A. in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and a B.S. in communications from the University of Texas at Austin.