The Museumgoer podcast

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.

Conceived as a fundraising event for the St. Louis Cathedral restoration, "Sunday Best" became a more comprehensive look at the churchgoing finery of both parishioners and clergy -- and a showcase for curatorial imagination. Here’s a conversation in the galleries with co-curator Sarah Waits and Christopher Wiseman, executive director of the Catholic Cultural Center of New Orleans, which oversees both the cathedral and convent museum. Images accompanying the interview are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com,The episode starts with a recap of a recent stay at the Pontchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans.

The traveling exhibit “Indigeaux: Yes, Spirit. I’ll go …” recently arrived at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace. Created by Leia Lewis, an educator, artist, and self-described “light-bringer” and “cultural architect,” the exhibit features hand-dyed textiles and original artwork conceived as “an offering to the enslaved women whose hands were stained blue with indigo,” she says. In this episode, the guests are Lewis and Dr. IbrahimaSeck, director of research at the plantation.Images accompanying the conversation are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com. Photo by Amy Marquis, courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

Brian Piper, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, discusses the photography exhibit on view through January 4, 2026. Note: Piper asked for an addendum to the conversation, which is included at the end of the interview. Images accompanying the podcast are on the blog at themuseumgoer.com.

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month, a promotion by the American Library Association. In addition to all the free learning and entertainment a library card unlocks, there’s a pathway at your local branch -- almost everywhere you might be in Louisiana -- to free admission at some of the state’s best museums. In addition to all the learning that those programs unlock, the opportunity represents a potential savings ranging into thehundreds of dollars.  In this episode, the Museumgoer Podcast visits with HeatherRiley, the New Orleans library’s director of public services,and Billy Nungesser, who oversees the Louisiana State Museum system as lieutenant governor, to discuss a couple of library-based programs that provide free admission to museums around New Orleans and Louisiana. As always, learn more at themuseumgoer.com.

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.