The Museumgoer podcast

In this episode, we’ll step inside the new changing exhibit at the National WWII Museum, and chat with Cory Graff, Museum Curator and Restoration Manager. The exhibit, “Come Back Fighting: USS New Orleans at War” tells the story of a decorated heavy cruiser that served in almost every major Pacific theater battle of World War II. 

Christened at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1933 with water from the Mississippi River, the ship’s interwar duties took her to Europe, South America and the US territories of Alaska and Hawaii. Undergoing repairs at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, it survived (while providing one of the war’s signature soundtrack songs) and went on to fight at the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands. Losing her bow and more than 180 of her crew in a battle off Guadalcanal, she limped toward repairs and then was returned to action. In 1946, a victory lap brought her to New Orleans for the first postwar Mardi Gras

Photo courtesy of the National WWII Museum.

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

Also, new to the Historic Hotels portion of the site is a page devoted to the Rubenstein Hotel.

“American Revolution: The Augmented Exhibition” has opened at the Historic New Orleans Collection and will remain on view through January 17, 2027. From the French technology company Histovery, the exhibition uses hand-held tablet computers to open up 360-degree views of the sites, events and historical figures who fought for America’s independence 250 years ago. 

The HistoPads, as they’re called, are triggered at pedestals placed in front of several large-scale lightboxes that introduce each sequence, colonial Virginia to Boston to Philadelphia to Yorktown and so on.  

The exhibit will feel familiar to anyone who visited the Histovery exhibit “Notre-Dame de Paris” when it visited HNOC a couple of years ago. 

This is the exhibit’s US debut engagement, and it will tour for many years to many states. 

I recently visited the exhibit with Jason Wiese, HNOC’s chief curator, who discussed the overall show and went into some detail about HNOC’s contribution, a concluding sequence about Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez and his multicultural militia of free men of color, Acadians, Indigenous volunteers, and Spanish regulars which won a series of victories against the British along the Gulf Coast. 

“American Revolution: The Augmented Exhibition” is free, but timed tickets are required.  Read more and view some photos that accompany the conversation on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

Our guest is Stephen Kling, guest curator of “Gálvez and Louisiana in the American Revolution,” a new exhibit at the Cabildo that offers a heretofore largely obstructed Gulf Coast view of how bayou-based colonists prosecuted the quest for liberty.

Told through text, multimedia screens, re-created period garments, old and newly rendered artwork, and historical objects such as maps, documents and guns, the exhibit is intended to offer a comprehensive overview of our regional piece of the larger story.

And, if the exhibit somehow falls short of quenching anyone’s curiosity about its topic, there is a new 600-page book -- "An Underappreciated Victory: Bernardo Gálvez’s Mississippi River Campaign Against the British in 1779" -- for further study, cowritten by Kling. 

A few images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com. Thumbnail image courtesy of the Louisiana State Museum.

“Gálvez and Louisiana in the American Revolution” is on view through May 15, 2027. Thanks to Stephen, and thanks to you for listening. 

Two new exhibits at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art spotlight the art-collecting interests – and generosity – of Stacey and Michael Burke. 

One is a collection of “self taught,” “outsider” or “vernacular” work by Southern artists. “Burke’s Delight: The Stacey and Michael Burke Collection” will remain on view through January 10, 2027. 

The other, “Herman Leonard: Images of Jazz,” features portraits  of jazz giants from a portfolio of prints donated to the museum by the Burkes, will be on view through July 12, 2026. 

For this episode, I spoke with Michael Burke, by trade a lighting technician for film and television, including many seasons of the Law & Order suite of shows. 

Then I spent a few great minutes with Bradley Sumrall, the Ogden’s curator of the collection, for a discussion of both exhibits. 

We start with a discussion with Michael about how to categorize this art and these artists, and his history of collecting. Bradley late expands on that conversation, while adding fascinating curatorial insight to the formation of both shows. 

Thanks to Michael and Bradley, and thanks to you for listening. 

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

There is subtle history to see in some of the ball photos on view in the new exhibit “Origins of New Orleans Black Carnival Society: The Story of the Illinois Clubs,” now on view at the Presbytere. Basketball court markings are visible in several of them because the clubs – the Original Illinois Club, born in 1895, and the Young Men Illinois Club, a 1926 offshoot – for most of their history had to hold their Carnival balls in gymnasiums. 

The Municipal Auditorium, longtime bastion of white Carnival society, wasn’t open to Black carnival organizations until 1966. The queen of the Young Men Illinois Club ball that year, Karen Becnel Moore, opens the conversation with her memories of the ball and its place in the city’s history. You’ll see a photo of her from that night when you visit the exhibit. 

Then we’re joined by Kelly Dorsey Parker, co-curator of the exhibit with Kim Vaz-Deville, to discuss the exhibit’s composition and a few marquee objects. “The Story of the Illinois Clubs” makes the Presbytere – with its permanent Mardi Gras exhibition and the temporary exhibit “Pioneers of Women’s Carnival” – at least a half-day destination for museumgoers interested in an immersion in local Carnival history. 

Thanks to Kelly and Dr. Moore, and thanks to you for listening.

Happy Mardi Gras, everybody.

Images, courtesy of the Louisiana State Museum and co-curator Parker, are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

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.