At first, The Historic New Orleans Collection doesn’t quite sound like a museum. I remember first thinking: jewelry? A gift shop? But it is actually one of the best museums in the Quarter. And it’s not just a museum — it’s research center and publisher as well. It’s one of the places I visit every summer without fail when we live in the Quarter for a couple of weeks. It’s interesting, it’s lovely, and it’s…air conditioned.
This is the Counting House, a 1794 warehouse which was renovated in the 1830s, which features paintings by Louisiana artists:
Several other galleries of the museum make up the ‘Louisiana History Galleries’. This is an oil painting by Jose Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza. He arrived in Louisiana in 1782 from Merida, Mexico, and did this painting ca 1795 of Clara de la Motte (ca 1761-1822) who was a Jewish emigre from Curacao. She had only arrived here in 1787 and married Benjamin Monsanto, who was also Jewish. But…they married in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of St. Louis. After a fire, a rebuilding, and adding on, that today is St. Louis Cathedral.
This is a collage with watercolor, ca. 1842 by William Henry Brown, and what makes it so special is…‘
…that it was done as silhouette. All these pieces are actually separately cut out and applied:
This oil is from 1860, by John Antrobus, and is titled ‘A Plantation Burial’:
The owner and his wife look on:
and the artist has painted himself in, as well:
Portrait of Judah P. Benjamin,
Ad for ’60 Very Choice Sugar Plantation Hands’:
In holdings of more recent vintage, this 1991 bumper sticker for Edwin Edwards (funny thing: Av had a phone conversation with him late last year, said he sounded like a likable, regular guy):
…an anti-Huey Long medal (made to appear as a toilet seat with him being hit in the jaw), to commemorate an embarrassing incident in which he got into a fight in a men’s room in Long Island:
Here, a placard and cue card for the Mahalia Jackson Show:
…and you know *exactly* what this is:
The museum’s next exhibition begins in March: ‘New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865’.