NOLA Art Reveries | Called To The Camera | SUNO Museum of Art |Stella Jones Gallery

NOVEMBER 6, 2022 NEWSLETTER

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Pigment International at the Penthouse Miami

PIGMENT INTERNATIONAL TAKES A ROAD TRIP TO NOLA

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers

From photography’s beginnings in the United States, Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of the medium to produce beautiful portraits for their clients, while also making a variety of other photographic work in keeping with important movements like pictorialism, modernism, and abstraction.

Called to the Camera illustrates the artistic virtuosity, social significance, and political impact of Black photographers working in commercial portrait studios during photography’s first century. The exhibit is at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) through January 8, 2023 and showcases photos from public and private collections across the country.

Called to the Camera currently at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA)

Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World, Chicago 1928, William E. Woodard Studio.

Memphis Sanitation Worker's Strike (1968) by Ernest C. Withers

Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass

How to Make a Country, Alanna Airitam

Eartha Kitt in rehearsal

SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART

Pigment International made a visit to the Southern University New Orleans Art Museum (SUNOMA), under the leadership of Director and artist Ted Ellis. During October SUNOMA veiled its inaugural exhibition titled “I Fear For My Life: The Art of Justice”.

The group exhibit artistically expresses outrage over the racial inequity enmeshed in 21st-century American society. Ellis is an accomplished painter, as well as museum administrator and the exhibit includes a handful of his own provocative works.

The rest of the new space is home to SUNO’s spectacular African art collection, with nearly 2,500 pieces the university saved after Hurricane Katrina, Ellis said the collection, “is on a par with national collections,” including those of the New Orleans Museum of Art and Yale University.

Ted Ellis, Director of the Southern University at New Orleans Museum of Art

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Sculpture Resistance Through Change by John Scott and Roosevelt Madison

Singer, writer and producer Carol Bebelle and Baba Douglas Redd, now an ancestor, founders of Ashé Cultural Arts Center in NOLA

HOW ART DRIVES COMMUNITY PLACEMAKING IN THE BIG EASY

Ashé Cultural Arts Center on New Orlean’s Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard was founded in 1998 by artist Douglas Redd and writer/producer and singer Carol Bebelle. The center is a welcoming place where the community meets to plan and create art includes productions, art exhibits, community events and gatherings.

The center's commitment to culture, community and art has expanded the opportunities for the intersections of the physical, affiliation and alliance communities.

The core values that guide EOG and Ashé are:

Collaboration
Community-based Connectedness
Community Advocacy
Community Dialogue
Cultural Reciprocity and Justice
Economic and Community Development

Many will recognize the art that once flanked the entrance to the Congo Square portion of the NOLA Jazz and Heritage Festival that Bebelle programmed. The work now sits in Ashé. She also programmed art for the Essence Festival.

Work on screen by Jessica Strahan, part of Ashé's permanent collection

STELLA JONES GALLERY SHOWCASES WORK BY DELITA MARTIN AND CANDACE HUNTER

Work by Elizabeth Catlett at Stella Jones Gallery. Catlett served as founding head of the art department at Dillard University in New Orleans, and celebrated her birthday each year at the gallery.