Learning and Engagement - NOMA Annual Report

Besthoff Sculpture Garden Expansion – Following many months of planning and development, the Learning and Engagement department launched a comprehensive mobile app for the garden expansion in May 2019. This guide provides extended content and interpretation on all works and garden features, as well as family-oriented learning material. In tandem with the mobile guide, the department organized a range of programming throughout the year focused on the garden including Sculpture Garden artist Fred Wilson discussing his work the Mete of the Muse for the 2019 Donna Perret Rosen Lecture.
Public Programs – 2019 saw the continuation and expansion of NOMA’s ongoing commitment to engaging and vibrant public programs for diverse audiences. With over 20,000 public program attendees over the course of the year, programming ranged from the very popular Friday Nights at NOMA series, to multiple film series, artist talks, gallery discussions and much more.
Cultural Festivals – In February 2019, NOMA partnered with the Indian Arts Circle to host A Night of India with over 400 attendees. The night included dance, music, artmaking, food, film, gallery tours, and plethora of other activities dedicated to cultural immersion into the Asian subcontinent. The ever-popular annual JapanFest, hosted in October 2019 in conjunction with 42 vendors and community partners, saw the highest NOMA festival attendance to date with more than 3,000 attendees.
Teen Programs – After a two-month pilot in March-April, 2019, NOMA’s Teen Squad successfully started its first full year at the start of October 2019, with thirteen youth participants representing eight different schools. In their first few months, participating teens met with a range of NOMA staff. The Teen Squad had in-depth artist sessions with Sculpture Garden artist Fred Wilson and Bodies of Knowledge artist Adriana Corral. The teens began in earnest to plan and develop a large-scale teen event for the spring of the following year.
Creative Assembly/Community Engagement – Building on the foundational work that the museum implemented in 2018 with the launch of the NOMA+ Mobile Museum, 2019 saw the expansion and further development of its community engagement programming through the Creative Assembly Initiative. Creative Assembly is a community engagement initiative that uses neighborhood-based participatory art experiences as a vehicle for personal exploration, community collaboration, and social change. Bringing together community members, artists, community-based organizations and Museum staff, the Creative Assembly Initiative facilitates community generated art projects and programs in New Orleans neighborhood spaces and at the museum. The Creative Assembly program includes the NOMA+ Mobile Museum, an Arts Connector residency pairing artists with community-based organizations to realize projects, and extended partnerships between NOMA and community-based organizations. A few 2019 highlights included Arts Connector residencies with artist Garrett Bradley and high school students from NOVAC; Dancer and choreographer Edward Spots and youth from Dancing Grounds performing together at NOMA; artist Regina Agu and students from New Harmony High School; and an extended collaboration with the Travis Hill School, the operating high school inside the New Orleans Juvenile Detention Center and Orleans Parrish Prison.
Youth and Family Programs – Continuing its commitment to youth arts education, NOMA provided a robust spectrum of programming to youth and families over the 2019 year. NOMA’s quarterly Free Family Festival program launched in August of 2019 with an attendance of over 1,500 multigenerational participants, and NOMA hosted its first ever Family Field Day in the expanded sculpture garden in November 2019. Kids got creative in NOMA’s Studio KIDS workshops.Young artists explored works of art in the Museum and then created art projects based on NOMA’s collection and special exhibitions. Summer Art Camps provided eight weeklong sessions for students ages 5-10 from June to early August.
Field Building – Working in partnership with the Ford and Walton Family Foundations’ Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, NOMA continued to facilitate the Professional Pathways Internship for university students enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), providing mentoring and stipends for semester-long internships with NOMA staff. Additionally, NOMA expanded its Creative Careers Internship from eight students in 2018 to fifteen in 2019. Offering underrepresented high school students key professional development for future careers in the museum field, the Creative Careers Internship Program spanned six weeks over the summer months. Participating students received professional mentoring by NOMA staff, visited a range of local museums and cultural institutions, visited local university campuses, and even traveled with NOMA Learning and Engagement staff to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
School and Teacher Programs – In 2019, more than 12,000 K-12 students visited the museum on school tours. NOMA offered a notable selection of programs for schools and educators designed to inspire a love of art, while increasing academic skills in communication, language arts, and critical thinking.
Mini Masters – 2019 marked the eighth consecutive year of the museum’s nationally renowned Mini Masters program, a collaborative arts integration program for pre-kindergarten students. Mini Masters encourages students to develop higher order thinking skills, make observations, and engage in conversations through museum visits and classroom activities. The program is designed to build capacity of early childhood educators through professional development and lesson modeling that develops discussion routines, techniques for teaching the elements of art, and skills for creating art in the classroom. Students visited NOMA at multiple points over the course of the year, and proudly exhibited their projects at the museum at the much-anticipated culminating Mini Masters Showcase held in the museum’s Great Hall. In 2019, 206 students from four schools participated in Mini Masters. Partner Schools for 2018-19 included ReNEW Schaumburg Elementary, ReNEW Dolores T. Aaron Academy, Educare New Orleans, and Kingsley House.

Programming Highlights

THEATER

May: The Henchman: A Shakespeare Story, presented by The NOLA Project
October–November: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, presented by The NOLA Project

Film

FRAGMENTED LANDSCAPES FILM SERIES

December 7 | New Ideas about Landscape
December 14 | A Country That is Not of This World
January 11 | Stories and Place
January 18 | The Louisiana Landscape

ARTISTS CHOICE FILM SERIES (in conjunction with Bodies of Knowledge)

June 29 | Adriana Corral selects The Constant Gardener
August 17 | Manon Bellet selects La Jetée
August 24 | Garrett Bradley selects Sidewalk Stories
September 14 | Mahmoud Chouki selects Whatever Lola Wants
October 5 | Edward Spots selects Fame

SHIRIN NESHAT FILMS (in conjunction with Bodies of Knowledge)

August 2 | Looking for Oum Kulthum
August 16 | Women Without Men

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

January 11–12: The Orléans Collection Symposium: Tastemaking, Networks, and Legacy

February 8: A Night of India

March 22: Community Conversation: Considering Cultural Exchange

May 17: Nuit Brillante: A Late Night Celebration

May 2: Dickie Landry SOLO Concert

June 28: Premiere of Black Magic dance performance by Edward Spots with Donna Crump and Dancing Grounds

July 20: Taylor Scholars Teen Day

August 24: “Play It Cool” Family Festival

October 4: Wilmer Wilson lecture in conjunction with Bodies of Knowledge

October 12: Japan Fest

October 23: Lee Ledbetter lecture and book signing, in conjunction with the Besthoff Sculpture Garden expansion

November 20: Opera Nouvelle performance in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden

November 23: Family Field Day in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden

December 4: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend with Conservator Howard Sutcliffe

December 14: Scent-blending workshop with Xodo Botanicals in conjunction with Inventing Acadia

December 18: The Helis Foundation Lecture: Regina Agu with Tia-Simone Gardner

ARTS & LETTERS

February 1: Edmund White in conversation with Thomas Beller
April 24: Zachary Lazar in conversation with Deborah Luster
June 23: A Night of Music and Literature with Narrative 4
December 11: Environmental Justice in New Orleans

BY THE NUMBERS

12,801	School Tour Participants
20,899	Public Program Attendees
3,128	Family Program Participants
3,594	Cultural Festival Participants

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