This selection of works from Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s permanent collection considers the many ways artists throughout the region explore concepts of process, material and identity through diverse media and practices. These works illustrate how Southern artists are actively engaging with their region and with the rest of the world through their practice and how Ogden Museum is filling a critical role in confronting the past, embracing the future and bridging the reconciliation of both. Read More about Knowing Who We Are: The Contemporary Dialogue MADE POSSIBLE BY THE TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART

This exhibition, encompassing the entire Museum, tells an updated story of the South through the permanent collection and recent major acquisitions. Drawing inspiration from Ralph Ellison who said, “knowing where we are has a lot to do with our knowing who we are,” this exhibition provides a portrait of place that challenges conventional notions of Southern identity. With a geographic region spanning from Baltimore to Miami to El Paso, Knowing Who We Are celebrates the diversity of the region – its histories, cultures and proximate traditions – offering a view of Southern identity that is more fully representative of its people. Read More about Knowing Who We Are: A 20th Anniversary Exhibition MADE POSSIBLE BY THE TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART

Featured image: Kim Llerena, Route 90 West, Texas (Blockbuster) (2020), 8″ x 10”, archival pigment print December 9, 2022 CURRENTS is an annual exhibition that highlights the diverse photographic work being created… Read More about CURRENTS 2022 SHOWCASING THE WORKS OF NEW ORLEANS PHOTO ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Black Alchemy: Remembering Fazendeville will open on Friday, December 9, 2022 at Ogden Museum of Southern Art and exhibits photographs from Fazendeville, a former African American community in St. Bernard… Read More about BLACK ALCHEMY: REMEMBERING FAZENDEVILLE

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. This year’s juror, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, has selected 51 works by 49 artists from a total of 1,036 submissions. Read More about Louisiana Contemporary 2022 Presented by The Helis Foundation

Leaving Appalachia: The Art of Gregory B. Saunders is the first major museum survey of the artist’s career, bringing forth rarely-seen works from private and public collections to show the depth of breadth of the artist’s practice. This exhibition illustrates a life spent in contemplation of process and place. It is a meditation on personal narrative and regional identity. Read More about Leaving Appalachia: The Art of Gregory B. Saunders

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925 – 1972) was a visionary photographer known for making haunting black and white photographs of his children in masks, portraits of literary friends and experiments in abstract photography.

Opening October 1, 2022 at Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Read More about The Photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard

This portrait captures the complex relationship between an enslaved boy and the children of his master – growing up in the same French Quarter mansion, where there existed simultaneously a sort of intimacy alongside the psychological trauma of forced bondage. At some point, likely in the late 19th or early 20th century, the figure of Bélizaire was intentionally painted over; effectively erasing him from the portrait. In 2005 the painting was sold to a private collector and underwent conservation, revealing Bélizaire’s image oncemore. Read More about Bélizaire and the Frey Children

This portrait of New Orleans’ chef and “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” Leah Chase, is appropriately larger than life as is Chase’s legacy as an advocate for both Creole cooking and African-American art. Her restaurant, Dooky Chase, became central to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, providing a safe place for meetings with leading figures of the movement including A.P. Tureaud, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Riders. Over the years, she fed scores of luminaries – such as Sarah Vaughn, Nat King Cole, James Baldwin, Ray Charles and two US Presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She would often say, “In my dining room, we changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken.” Read More about Focus: Leah Chase by Aron Belka