Ogden Museum of Southern Art
925 Camp St
New Orleans, LA 70130
504.539.9600 | HOURS
925 Camp St
New Orleans, LA 70130
504.539.9600 | HOURS
Ida Kohlmeyer, No. 1 Blues, c. 1960, Oil on canvas, Gift of J.P. Morgan Chase, 2006.28.8
Vicinal Visions presents the works of Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer and Dorothy Hood from the collection of Ogden Museum of Southern Art, highlighting three visionary women who helped expand the boundaries of abstraction in the American South. Though each of these Southern artists developed their own distinct visual language, their work shares a spirit of experimentation and Modernist sensibilities, refracted through individual lenses of personal experience and place.
Dusti Bongé, widely considered Mississippi’s first Modernist painter, absorbed the lessons of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism while remaining rooted in the rhythms of the Gulf South. Her canvases oscillated between dreamlike figuration and gestural abstraction, drawing inspiration from both the outer world of the Gulf Coast’s natural and built environments, as well as the inner world of dreams, visions and the psyche. Ida Kohlmeyer, working in New Orleans, moved toward non-objective and geometric abstraction early in her career. She later developed an instantly recognizable visual language of symbols, grids and calligraphic marks—creating joyous and playful compositions that seemed both orderly and free, personal and universal. Her practice distilled the influence of Mark Rothko and Hans Hofmann into a syntax that felt inseparably tied to the vibrancy of her native city. Dorothy Hood, though raised in Houston, was profoundly shaped by her decades in Mexico, where she moved in circles of poets, composers, Surrealists and the Mexican Muralists, most notably José Clemente Orozco. Her monumental canvases radiate a cosmic sensibility, merging Abstract Expressionist gesture with a metaphysical search for space, silence and the infinite.
Placed in conversation, the works of Bongé, Kohlmeyer and Hood resonate with the vitality of Modernist expression in the American South. These three artists, born between 1903 and 1918, each responded to the global currents of abstraction in ways that were shaped by their specific geographies—whether the salty, storm-bent landscape of the Mississippi Gulf Coast; the diverse, vibrant and historic cultural fabric of New Orleans; or the spirit of artistic optimism and endless possibility shared by both Mexico City and Houston. Together, these three women testify to the power of artists who, working outside the traditional centers of New York and Paris, expanded the horizon of Modern Art and redefined what Southern Abstraction could mean.
Vicinal Voices is curated by Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and will be on view March 21 through July 19, 2026.
Ogden Museum of Southern Art is dedicated to presenting and preserving the art of the American South. Exhibitions like this are made possible through the generosity of supporters.