(NEW ORLEANS, LA) – Ogden Museum of Southern Art has opened the call for entries for the annual juried exhibition Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation. The call for entries is open now through May 27, 2022. Like previous years, this year’s Louisiana Contemporary features The Helis Foundation Art Prize, a $5,000 award, chosen by the juror and given to an artist in the exhibition in support of their studio and artistic practice. In addition, cash prizes will also be awarded to first, second and third place winners.
The open call for Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation, is open to all artists 18 years and older residing in Louisiana. All work must be original and completed within the last two years (2020-2022).
Important Dates:
- Friday, May 27 – Louisiana Contemporary Call for Entries closes at 11:59 p.m. CST
- Week of June 6 – Applicants receive a notification email that Louisiana Contemporary Jurying process has begun
- Week of July 4 – Applicants receive a notification email of Louisiana Contemporary accepted artists
- Friday, July 22 – All accepted work must be received at the Museum
- Saturday, August 6 – Opening of Louisiana Contemporary Exhibition
- Sunday, January 8, 2023 – Closing of Louisiana Contemporary Exhibition
2022 guest juror Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will curate a selection of works submitted, and subsequently choose four award winners to receive further recognition. These awards will be given at a private reception for Louisiana Contemporary artists on August 5 and publicly announced on August 6.
Louisiana Contemporary was established in 2012 as a statewide, juried exhibition to promote contemporary art practices in Louisiana. The show provides a space for living artists’ work and recognizes the vibrant visual arts culture of Louisiana and the role of New Orleans as a rising art center. Since the inaugural exhibition over ten years ago, Ogden Museum has shown works by 489 Louisiana artists.
Learn more about Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation and submit work by visiting https://ogdenmuseum.org/exhibition/louisiana-contemporary-2022/
ABOUT VALERIE CASSEL OLIVER
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.
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 of more than four thousand works, making it the largest 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 and local craft.
Ogden Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Admission is free to Museum Members and $13.50 for adults, $11 for seniors 65 and older, $6.75 for children ages 5-17 and free for children under 5.
The Museum is located at 925 Camp Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. For more information visit ogdenmuseum.org or call 504.539.9650.