New Orleans Museum of Art

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) is the oldest fine arts institution in New Orleans, Louisiana. Situated within City Park near the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, the museum holds a permanent collection of almost 40,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of global art history. Established in 1911 as the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, the institution has evolved from a local civic initiative into one of the most significant art museums in the United States. Its comprehensive holdings, coupled with the adjacent Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, anchor the museum as a central cultural repository for the region.

In 1910, the wealthy sugar broker and philanthropist Isaac Delgado donated $150,000 to the City Park Improvements Association to erect an art museum for the citizens of New Orleans. Delgado, influenced by his late aunt's desire for such an institution, collaborated with City Park board member Pierre A. Lelong to secure the site at the end of what became Lelong Avenue. An open architectural competition awarded the design to Samuel Abraham Marx. The cornerstone was laid on March 22, 1911, and the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art opened on December 16, 1911, with Mayor Martin Behrman and 3,000 guests in attendance. Delgado, aged 71, was absent due to medical issues and died shortly after on January 4, 1912. During its early decades, the museum maintained a conservative orientation, closely tied to the Art Association of New Orleans and Tulane University's Newcomb School of Art. Budget crises in the 1930s nearly forced its closure, but public pressure reversed city funding cuts. A partnership with the Samuel H. Kress Foundation began in 1931 with a gift of a Madonna and Child by Giovanni del Biondo. In 1971, the institution was renamed the New Orleans Museum of Art, and in 1973, E. John Bullard became its fifth director, serving for 37 years and significantly expanding its photography collection. A major $23 million expansion and renovation project completed in 1993 elevated the museum into the top 25 percent of the nation's largest and most important fine art museums. Although Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused $6 million in damage to the building and sculpture garden, the elevated site restricted flooding to the basement, leaving the permanent collection unharmed. The museum closed for seven months before reopening and undertaking extensive recovery exhibitions.

NOMA's permanent collection encompasses almost 40,000 objects, surveying the development of Western civilization from the pre-Christian era to the present, alongside substantial global holdings. The museum is particularly noted for its extraordinary strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, and African and Japanese works. The French art survey is comprehensive, notably including works by Edgar Degas painted during his time living with his mother's family in New Orleans between 1871 and 1872. The photography collection, initiated in 1973, includes over 12,000 works from the early days of the medium to the present. Additional strengths include the Arts of the Americas, surveying cultural heritage from the pre-Columbian period through the Spanish Colonial era, with particular richness in Mayan objects and Cuzco painting and sculpture. The museum also holds significant collections of glass, ceramics, portrait miniatures, Faberge eggs, Native American art, Chinese ceramics, Indian sculpture, and folk arts from Africa, Indonesia, and the South Pacific. Decorative arts are represented by period rooms featuring 18th and 19th century American furniture, including the Rosemonde E. and Emile Kuntz rooms, and a specialized collection of American chairs.

The museum's European and American art collections feature works by Cimabue, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Pissarro, Rodin, Gauguin, Braque, Dufy, Miro, Jackson Pollock, Mary Cassatt, and Georgia O'Keeffe. A highlight of the French collection is the group of paintings by Edgar Degas from his 1871 to 1872 stay in New Orleans. In 1985, the museum purchased Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun's Portrait of Marie Antoinette for $500,000 to mark its 75th anniversary. The museum has also hosted historically significant exhibitions that brought major works to the South, including Picasso: Forty Years of His Art in 1940, which featured Guernica, and the 1953 exhibition French Painting Through Five Centuries, 1400-1900, organized with the Louvre. In 1977, the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition drew 900,000 visitors in four months. The museum also served as a long-term home for the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation's Faberge collection.

The original museum building was partly designed by Benjamin Morgan Harrod, the former chief engineer of New Orleans, though the prize for the architectural design was awarded to Samuel A. Marx of Chicago. The neoclassical structure was situated on a designated circle at the terminus of Lelong Avenue within City Park. Between 1970 and 1971, the Edward Wisner Foundation funded the Wisner Education Wing, a three-level addition to the left side of the building. A major expansion and renovation project, initiated with $20 million raised by 1991, was completed and opened in 1993 at a cost of $23 million, nearly doubling the size of the building. The museum complex includes the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, a five-acre landscaped area behind the main building. Initially opened in 2003 with over 40 sculptures, the garden doubled in size in 2019 with an additional 27 works. The garden features over 90 modern and contemporary sculptures set among 200-year-old live oaks, mature pines, magnolias, camellias, lagoons, and pedestrian bridges.

The New Orleans Museum of Art is located at One Collins C. Diboll Circle in City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the Canal Street to City Park streetcar line. The museum operates daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visitor amenities include the NOMA Museum Shop, an auditorium for film screenings and presentations, and Cafe NOMA, a restaurant by Ralph Brennan. Educational outreach includes guided group tours, teacher workshops, online guides, and a pop-up museum called NOMA+ that visits local schools and community centers. The museum also hosts festivals, music programs, lectures, and wellness activities. It collaborates closely with other local institutions, such as The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana State Museum, to develop special exhibitions.