Development and External Affairs

After more than a year of construction, the expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden opened on May 15, 2019. NOMA’s initiative to expand the sculpture garden enables the museum to continue sharing significant art and artists with the broadest possible public. The sculpture garden expansion includes 27 new sculptures, as well as an outdoor amphitheatre and stage, pedestrian bridges and walkways, a new gallery, and an outdoor learning environment. The museum worked with New Orleans & Company to host a press trip for writers from national publications, who visited New Orleans to attend the opening. The expansion was featured in ARTnews, Art Forum, The Times, Galerie, Forbes, The Art Newspaper, and Blouin Artinfo.
On May 20, 2019, NOMA hosted more than 300 museum directors from across the country and nearly 2,000 museum professionals at the museum and newly-expanded Besthoff Sculpture Garden for a welcome reception as part of the American Alliance of Museums’ annual meeting.
Tina Freeman received the Isaac Delgado Memorial Award on March 16, 2019, in recognition of her long-term service, support, and dedication to the museum. Freeman served as curator of photographs at NOMA (1977–1982), during which time she published the first survey book of NOMA’s photography collection, which remains an invaluable asset in promoting this collection worldwide. She has also created two endowed funds at NOMA to support the acquisition of works that reflect photography’s international scope and help NOMA continue to build and steward our foundation in our photography department. She served on the museum’s Board of Trustees for a number of years, dating back to 2003. In 2018, NOMA announced the largest and most significant single gift of photographs in the institution’s history, a promised bequest of over 1,300 photographs from Freeman’s private collection.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded NOMA a $1 million grant to support the planning and staffing of a new conservation initiative. The funds will support the establishment of a conservation center at NOMA and create two new museum positions in the areas of object conservation, including outdoor sculpture and photography conservation. These areas of focus align with NOMA’s new milestones and historic strengths – the recent expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden and the ongoing commitment of NOMA as a center for the study for photography.
The NOMA Volunteer Committee (NVC) had another successful year, attracting more than 5,400 people to their four events: Art in Bloom: Illuminations: Looking Within and Beyond in partnership with IBERIABANK; NOMA Egg Hunt and Family Festival; LOVE in the Garden presented by Hancock Whitney; and Odyssey: Mystère Louisiane in partnership with IBERIABANK. The NVC raised more than $1.14 million in support for NOMA. These critical operating funds impacted all areas of the museum, from developing groundbreaking exhibitions to funding our community outreach programs.
NOMA enjoyed significant attention in the national and international press in 2019. Two articles in the New York Times recognized the power art has to start conversations about contemporary issues and lauded NOMA’s effectiveness at encouraging these conversations. A Wall Street Journal article reviewed Bodies of Knowledge. Peter Plagens remarked, “In a time when museums are trying to better represent racial and sexual diversity, putting together a group exhibition that’s both socially trenchant and visually arresting is a tall order. With Bodies of Knowledge, however, the New Orleans Museum of Art succeeds admirably.”
NOMA welcomed 372,064 visitors from 93 countries in 2019, a more than 16% increase in visitation over 2018. This increase reflects the community’s excitement about the expansion of the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and NOMA’s efforts to develop consistent, inventive programming that engages visitors with the art and exhibitions on view.
In 2019, the museum shifted to a programming-focused marketing strategy and began targeting audiences within a closer proximity to the museum in an attempt to engage new audiences with our vast and exciting programming options, instead of reaching them with language about exhibitions. In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Bodies of Knowledge, NOMA heavily promoted a dance performance featuring Edward Spots on the exhibition’s opening night in an effort to appeal to a variety of demographics and bring new people into the museum. 450 people attended the performance.
NOMA was recognized with three Southeastern Museums Conference awards: NOMA Magazine received a silver award, and our annual report and visitor’s guide both won bronze medals. Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories was named the 2019 Museum Exhibition of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
NOMA reorganized the Visitor Experience department to unite staff in admissions, the NOMA Museum Store, and museum gallery attendants as one team dedicated to ensuring an excellent experience for all of NOMA’s visitors and volunteers.

2019 FUNDRAISING CHAIRS

Art in Bloom
Sweet Dupuy
Catherine Makk

NOMA Egg Hunt and Family Festival
Emily Arrata
Rebecca Friedman

NVC Chair
Jennifer Heebe

LOVE in the Garden
presented by Hancock Whitney
Julie and Ted George
Cammie and Charles Mayer
Aimée Farnet Siegel and Mike Siegel

Odyssey in partnership with IBERIABANK
Anne and Edmund Redd
Rupa and Tarun Jolly

SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE

The New York Times, January 10, 2019, The Strange, the Surreal and the Downright Scary, by Jordan G. Teacher

The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2019, ‘Bodies of Knowledge’ Review: Balancing the Aesthetic and the Political, by Peter Plagens

The New York Times, October 23, 2019, ‘You Can’t Stand in Louisiana and See a Glacier,’ by Sophie Hanger

Art in America, April 4, 2019, Light Touch: Keith Sonnier at the New Orleans Museum of Art, by Charlie Tatum

Metropolis, June 4, 2019, The New Orleans Museum of Art Unveils 6.5 Acre Sculpture Garden Expansion, by Osman Can Yerebakan

Forbes, June 14, 2019, New Orleans Museum of Art’s Expanded Sculpture Garden Offers Vacation from Your New Orleans Vacation, by Chadd Scott

Social Media Highlights

NOMA used Instagram Stories to create a “field guide” to the exhibition You Are Here: A Brief History of Photography and Place. Visitors were prompted to use the field guide as a way to explore the exhibition while in the galleries. Exhibition curator Brian Piper posed questions about themes in the exhibition, allowing visitors to find deeper meaning in some of the works.

In order to give underrepresented cultural figures even greater visibility, the exhibition Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse launched an outdoor component in which the museum partnered with a number of local sites to install enormous images on buildings around New Orleans during Jazz Fest time. The signs include only the words #nomatimothyduffy alongside some of Duffy’s most prolific images, with the goal of generating excitement and curiosity around the exhibition.

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2019 FUNDRAISING CHAIRS

SELECTED MEDIA COVERAGE

Social Media Highlights