Newcomb Art Gallery

The Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is a collections-holding art museum located on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is situated within the Woldenberg Art Center. The institution is historically significant for its stewardship of the world's largest collection of Newcomb Pottery and related crafts produced at Newcomb College. In addition to administering the broader university art collections, the museum has, since 2014, increasingly dedicated its programming to socially engaged art, civic dialogue, and community transformation.

The museum's origins trace to the 1886 founding of H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College by Josephine Louise Newcomb, which provided design training for decorative arts production. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tulane University attempted to redirect the college's endowment, prompting alumnae action during the 1986 centennial to reaffirm the college's integrity. Alumna and jewelry artist Mignon Faget subsequently proposed an art museum to preserve the college's art legacy. A grant funded by alumna Joyce Frank Menschel in the early 1990s facilitated this vision. In 1996, the Newcomb Art Department completed a renovation adding a 3,600-square-foot exhibition space, officially establishing the Newcomb Art Gallery as its own department within the School of Liberal Arts. Hurricane Katrina flooded the administrative offices in 2005, though the art holdings remained relatively undamaged. After the storm, Tulane closed Newcomb College and diverted its endowment. The gallery received a Community Arts Award from the Arts Council of New Orleans in 2010. In 2012, the gallery moved under the Office of the Provost. Under director Monica Ramirez-Montagut, who served from July 2014 to July 2020, the institution transformed, officially becoming the Newcomb Art Museum in July 2015 to distinguish itself from a commercial gallery. Miriam Taylor Fair served as interim director from July 2020 to August 2021, navigating closure and reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maurita N. Poole was hired as director in August 2021.

The museum's holdings encompass a broad range of mediums, anchored by the world's largest collection of Newcomb arts and crafts produced between 1895 and 1940. This segment includes pottery, embroidery, bound books, and metalwork associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. Beyond these historical crafts, the museum administers the university's teaching collection, which features drawings, watercolors, paintings, sculptures, and prints by artists affiliated with Newcomb College. The institution also oversees significant works of stained glass. Honoring the legacy of Newcomb College, the museum regularly presents work by women artists and maintains a focus on socially engaged art and civic dialogue.

The Newcomb arts and crafts collection includes important pieces by ceramists and artisans such as Sadie Irvine, Harriet Coulter Joor, and Marie de Hoa LeBlanc. The museum oversees several stained-glass windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the majority of which were commissioned between 1894 and 1896 by Josephine Louise Newcomb and Frank Walter Callender for a chapel at the Washington Avenue campus. Following the college's 1918 relocation, two Tiffany triptychs were installed in the Woodward Way breezeway fronting the museum's interior facade, with other windows located in the Myra Clare Rogers Memorial Chapel and Tilton Memorial Hall. The university collection also holds works by Newcomb-affiliated artists Angela Gregory, Ida Kohlmeyer, Lynda Benglis, and Caroline Durieux. In 2003, the museum, then operating as a gallery, commissioned a work by Carrie Mae Weems known as the Louisiana Project.

The museum is located in the Woldenberg Art Center on the Tulane University campus. The facility encompasses a 3,600-square-foot exhibition space added during the 1996 expansion and renovation of the Newcomb Art Department. The gallery space serves as a physical and symbolic bridge between the university's Art Studio and Art History programs. The building's interior facade fronts the Woodward Way breezeway, which houses the two Tiffany stained-glass triptychs.

The Newcomb Art Museum is located on the uptown campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is accessible via the Tulane University/Audubon Park and Zoo public transit stop. The museum presents an average of four exhibitions annually, accompanied by educational programs such as lectures, symposia, film series, artist-led family programs, public tours, performances, and studio demonstrations. It operates under the Office of the Provost at Tulane University.