November 21, 2009
8:30pm – 11:30pm
The New Orleans Museum of Art, the city’s oldest fine arts institution, has a magnificent permanent collection of more than 40,000 objects, valued in excess of $200 million. The collection, noted for its extraordinary strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, African and Japanese works, continues to grow. The five-acre Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at NOMA is one of the most important sculpture installations in the United States, with 50 sculptures situated on a beautifully landscaped site amongst meandering footpaths, reflecting lagoons, Spanish moss-laden 200-year-old live oaks, mature pines, magnolias, camellias, and pedestrian bridges.
The Museum continues to exhibit, interpret and preserve works of art from ancient to modern times. Paintings, drawings and prints, and decorative arts survey the development of Western Civilization from the pre-Christian era to the present. Reflecting its rich historic and cultural heritage in New Orleans, NOMA has formed a comprehensive survey of French art. Among its treasures is a group of works by the French Impressionist Edgar Degas who visited maternal relatives in New Orleans in 1871 and 1872 and painted just 20 blocks from the Museum. NOMA’s collection of works by masters of the School of Paris includes paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Braque, Dufy and Miro, among others.
NOMA has developed a unique Arts of the Americas collection, surveying the cultural heritage of North, Central and South America from the pre-Columbian period through the Spanish Colonial era. This collection is especially rich in objects from the great Mayan culture of Mexico and Central America, and in painting and sculpture from Cuzco, the fabulous Spanish capital of Peru. An important part of the Museum’s display of American art is a suite of period rooms featuring 18th and 19th century furniture and decorative arts.
As it has for 90 years, the New Orleans Museum of Art continues to be a gathering place for all those seeking to share the beauty of this extraordinary collection or world art and learn from it. NOMA engages, educates and enriches the diverse populations within, and drawn to, the New Orleans area.
FEATURED EXHIBITION:
Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio
November 15, 2009 – March 14, 2010
The New Orleans Museum of Art will present Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio, a major exhibition featuring more than 600 original artworks that shaped legendary animated features including Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.
Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio also will include artwork from the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios musical, The Princess and The Frog, an animated comedy from the creators of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, set in New Orleans and due for release at Christmas 2009.
“We are delighted to present this magical exhibition in New Orleans,” said NOMA director E. John Bullard. “Children will love seeing their favorite Disney characters in a museum setting and adults will be taken by the technical skill and emotional depth reflected in these works. It was Disney animators who really led the way in the 20th century toward establishing animation as a serious art form.”
Visitors to the exhibition will encounter themed rooms showcasing artwork related to specific animated features. Arranged chronologically by year of release, the rooms will feature, in order: Silly Symphonies, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Princess and the Frog. Film clips will accompany the artwork to demonstrate how individual sketches and paintings lead to a finished celluloid masterpiece. An adjacent Education Area will highlight Disney’s long association with music and also will serve as a mini library for animation research and storytelling programs.
New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins Diboll Circle, City Park
New Orleans, LA 70124
504.658.4100