The exhibit “Cut from a Different Cloth: Fashion Selections from Tulane Special Collections” is on view through May 29. Its story is a century-plus of New Orleans apparel, winding through many levels of the community, from Carnival royalty to Black Masking Indians, college students and titans of world couture.

I visited the exhibit to interview co-curators Faye Daigle and Kevin Williams. He’s coordinator for exhibits and outreach. She’s a research services library associate. They were both excellent hosts. 

“Cut from a Different Cloth” is on view in the Tulane University Special Collections second floor gallery in Joseph Merrick Jones Hall on Tulane’s Uptown campus. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is free and open to the public. 

Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com. 

A conversation with David Kunian, music curator at the New Orleans Jazz Museum about the exhibit “The District: Music and Musicians in Storyville.”

The District, as it was known to musicians, was nicknamed Storyville by its patrons for Sidney Story, the New Orleans politician whose 1897 ordinance established the District’s boundaries in an attempt to consolidate the city’s vice into one neighborhood. 

Romance isn’t quite the right word, but the romantic narrative is that jazz was born in Storyville, the French Quarter-adjacent designated sector for sin from 1897 to 1917. In the exhibit, that narrative is corrected.

When you visit the exhibit, you’ll hear music and oral histories and learn the story of segregated Black Storyville, located a few blocks toward Uptown from the District.

Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

Open since May, this exhibit tells the more than century-long story of half the local population’s efforts to seize their share of our rites of Carnival.

Wayne Phillips, Louisiana State Museum curator of costumes and textiles and Carnival collections, talks us through the exhibit's many stories, including a visit with one very special shoe.

Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

On view through May 16, 2027, the exhibit's 14 pieces, assembled from HNOC’s permanent holdings, focus primarily on traditional New Orleans jazz musicians, captured decades ago. There are outliers in the show, which Jason Wiese and I discuss in the podcast. Jason is the Collection’s chief curator and curated the exhibit, which features a soundtrack of selections created by people depicted on the walls.

Images accompanying the conversation can be found on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

A pre-opening conversation with artist James Michalopoulos, whose new exhibition takes place only a few steps and decades away from the artist’s start in New Orleans, painting on French Quarter streets.

For a prelude, a few memories of a recent stay at the Higgins Hotel & Conference Center, which is part of the huge National WWII Museum complex in New Orleans. A full report can be found on the history hotels section of themuseumgoer.com.

Images to accompany the "Mystical Expressionism" conversation are on the blog there, too.

Conceived as a fundraising event for the St. Louis Cathedral restoration, "Sunday Best" became a more comprehensive look at the churchgoing finery of both parishioners and clergy -- and a showcase for curatorial imagination.

Here’s a conversation in the galleries with co-curator Sarah Waits and Christopher Wiseman, executive director of the Catholic Cultural Center of New Orleans, which oversees both the cathedral and convent museum. Images accompanying the interview are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com,

The episode starts with a recap of a recent stay at the Pontchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans.

The traveling exhibit “Indigeaux: Yes, Spirit. I’ll go …” recently arrived at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace. Created by Leia Lewis, an educator, artist, and self-described “light-bringer” and “cultural architect,” the exhibit features hand-dyed textiles and original artwork conceived as “an offering to the enslaved women whose hands were stained blue with indigo,” she says.

In this episode, the guests are Lewis and Dr. IbrahimaSeck, director of research at the plantation.

Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

Photo by Amy Marquis, courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

Brian Piper, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, discusses the photography exhibit on view through January 4, 2026.

Note: Piper asked for an addendum to the conversation, which is included at the end of the interview.

Images accompanying the podcast are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month, a promotion by the American Library Association. In addition to all the free learning and entertainment a library card unlocks, there’s a pathway at your local branch -- almost everywhere you might be in Louisiana -- to free admission at some of the state’s best museums. In addition to all the learning that those programs unlock, the opportunity represents a potential savings ranging into thehundreds of dollars.

In this episode, the Museumgoer Podcast visits with HeatherRiley, the New Orleans library’s director of public services,and Billy Nungesser, who oversees the Louisiana State Museum system as lieutenant governor, to discuss a couple of library-based programs that provide free admission to museums around New Orleans and Louisiana.

As always, learn more at themuseumgoer.com.

This time, the Museumgoer Podcast guest is Sarah Waits, research archivist for the Office of Archives and Records at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who discusses her research into sacramental records to build the family tree and documents that make up "Rooted in Faith" exhibit at the Old Ursuline Convent Museum.

The exhibit explores the Creole 7th Ward roots of Robert Francis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV as of May 8, 2025.

A photo of the exhibit is on the blog at themuseumgoer.com. Digital versions of the family tree and the documents Waits discovered can be found at oldursulineconventmuseum.com.