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.

Since its opening in 2010, the Presbytere exhibition “Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond” has occupied some of the most valuable real estate in the Louisiana State Museum system and has arguably been the most important permanent museum exhibition in town.

Steps from the tourist magnet of Jackson Square, it’s been anengaging learning machine for visitors who only know the storm and its failed-levee aftermath through fading memories of live TV coverage of the catastrophe that came in the wake of Aug. 29, 2005.

To mark Katrina’s 20th anniversary, the exhibit isundergoing renovations to update its multimedia displays and to broaden and extend the city’s recovery timeline into the present.

In this episode, the conversation moves from Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser to Karen Leathem, a State Museum historian and curator who was part of the team that did the original installation and who is now working on the renovation.

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

New Orleans Museum Month is an annual promotion by New Orleans & Co. that runs throughout August, offering members of participating institutions two free admissions at all of the nearly 30 other institutions for the month.

In this episode, four local museum leaders discuss the benefits of museum membership beyond Museum Month.

Links to other Museum Month coverage can be found on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

New Orleans had the first purpose-built Jewish orphanage inAmerica because New Orleans had Yellow Fever, an indiscriminate orphan-maker. On view at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience through January 25, 2026,the changing exhibit “Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans” travels through a near-century of history.

Our guest this time is Michael Jacobs, MSJE’s collections and exhibits curator. Michael and I are joined in the gallery about halfway through by Marlene Trestman, author of “Most Fortunate Unfortunates,” a 2023 book the exhibit is based on.

Trestman was orphaned at age 11 and grew up as a foster care client of the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, successor to the Jewish Orphans’ Home.

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

An in-gallery interview with Brian Piper, the New Orleans Museum of Art's Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints and Drawings. We discuss the photography exhibit, on view through February 22, 2026, that explores life on -- and in -- the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

Images to accompany the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

A survey of some of the participants in the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement in the mid-20th century, "The Trail They Blazed" started its life as a series of oral histories, then became a traveling exhibit. It's on view at 520 Royal Street through early June 2026. Admission is free.

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

In his new book "Preserving the Legacy: Creating theNational WWII Museum," Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, cofounder of the museum with historian Stephen E. Ambrose and now its president and CEO emeritus, recounts in great detail how the road to today’s massive museum campus waspocked with craters.

The decade-plus quest by Ambrose and Mueller to navigate the National D-Day Museum, an inaugural incarnation, toward its opening 25 years ago was a story of tireless networking, courting of political support both locally and nationally, and fundraising, the retelling of which “getsboring to people,” Mueller said, but “it’s part of the story of how the museum was built.”

The book’s longtime working title, Mueller jokes, was "An Unlikely Story. "

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

A visit with Ross Patterson, curator of the exhibit "On American Shores," on view at the National WWII Museum through January 11, 2026.

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

Staged at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the exhibit is on view through September 21, 2025. Our guides are co-curators Uyen Dinh and Selina McKane.

Images that accompany the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

A conversation with Amanda M. Maples, Françoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. "New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations" is on view through August 10, 2025.

The exhibit, which will tour several American and African locations once its NOMA run concludes, is a model of cross-continental collaboration. Organized by NOMA and the Musée des Civilisations Noires in Dakar, Senegal, its planning team was led by Maples with co-curators Jordan A. Fenton (Miami University, Ohio), Lisa Homann (UNC Charlotte), artist Hervé Youmbi and core collaborator Aimé Kantoussan (Musée des Civilisations Noires). 

Images from the exhibit are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.