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K&B Plaza
A modish office tower dating to 1963 with an indoor/outdoor sculpture gallery. The outdoor sculptures, featuring Isamu Noguchi's The Mississippi, can be viewed anytime.
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Kurt E Schon Ltd Gallery
For monied art collectors and the rest of us, who just like to look at great art, Kurt E Schon is an immense gallery and storehouse that purveys fine 19th-century paintings. It's like a small museum showcasing the works of the lesser-known contemporaries of the master Impressionists, and most of the works shown here are of remarkable beauty.
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Lemieux Galleries
Gulf Coast art is the emphasis in this nationally recognized gallery, and it's a good place to get a handle on the impressive breadth of the regional arts scene. Paintings here include Kate Samworth's sardonic grotesqueries and Jesse Poimbeuf's colorful depictions of birds.
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Louisiana Artworks
A promising new addition to the Arts District, this 90,000 square foot space was established by the Arts Council of New Orleans to bring working artists and lovers of art together. By providing artists with affordable studio spaces, the project hopes to foster a continuation of the city's growing arts scene, even as rents go up around town. The Arts Council hopes to promote the local arts by keeping the facility to the public, thus giving visitors the opportunity to witness art being created.
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Louisiana Children's Museum
This educational museum is like a high-tech kindergarten. Corporate sponsors have helped create hands-on exhibits like a supermarket, complete with stocked shelves and check-out registers, and a TV news studio, where young anchors see themselves on monitors as they forecast a snowstorm in New Orleans. In the rush to build newer, bigger and better exhibits, the museum has failed to maintain some of the existing displays - 'Mayday!' calls on the tugboat radio go unheard and most kids abandon ship.
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Louisiana State Museum
Many museums and historic homes in the Quarter have been hit hard by the drop in tourism post-Katrina. At the time of research, the Louisiana State Museum was operating only two sites. The 1911 Cabildo (701 Chartres St), on the left of the cathedral, is a Louisiana history museum and has a Katrina exhibit. Its sister building, on the right of the church, the 1813 Presbytère (751 Chartres St), is an excellent Mardi Gras museum, with vibrant displays of costumes, parade floats and royal jewelry.
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Michalopoulos Gallery
Michalopoulos has become one of New Orleans most popular painters in recent years, partly on the strength of his best-selling Jazz Fest posters. His shop showcases his colorful and expressive architectural studies. The gallery holds frequent openings on Friday night.
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Musée Conti Historical Wax Museum
Every city in America with a tourism industry of any size must have a wax museum, right? New Orleans' version, the Musée Conti waxes nostalgic about local historical figures, including Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, Louis Armstrong and Napoleon Bonaparte (caught in the bathtub for some reason); the lifelike exhibits then detour suddenly toward more sensational personalities like Frankenstein's monster (chained down, for your protection) and the Swamp Thing (unchained!).
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National World War II Museum
The extensive, heart-wrenching National World War II Museum collects the sobering eyewitness accounts of life and conflict during WWII, and houses actual planes, weaponry and landing craft, as well as excellent exhibits on all phases of the war. Many of the volunteer docents are war survivors. A multi-million-dollar expansion, in progress at the time of research, will include an interactive theater and a United Service Organization cantina.
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New Orleans African American Museum
The New Orleans African American Museum exhibits local artists in a tidy Creole cottage with terraced grounds.
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New Orleans Glasswork & Printmaking Studios
In a huge 25,000-foot brick building, this place is a combination studio and gallery space primarily for glass blowers and stained glass artisans. Not only can you admire and purchase works here; you might also watch artists blow glass, which is an impressive sight to behold. Saturday afternoon is a good time to come to catch artists in action.
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New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park
The headquarters for the Jazz National Historic Park does not have much to offer yet - there's no historic exhibit pulling all the stops. Such a thing is sorely missing in the 'Cradle of Jazz.' However, the center does have educational musical programs on most days of the week.
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New Orleans Museum of Art
Also in City Park, the elegant New Orleans Museum of Art was founded in 1910 and is well worth a visit. Its sculpture garden contains a cutting-edge collection in lush, meticulously planned grounds.
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New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
The Pharmacy Museum is a beautifully preserved shop with ancient display cases filled with intriguing little bottles. The shop was established in 1816 by Louis J Dufilho at a time when pharmaceutical arts were newly established. He dispensed gold-coated pills to the wealthy, and opium, alcohol and cannabis to those who needed to feel better for less money.
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Newcomb Art Gallery
The gallery features a permanent exhibit of the college's collection, including Newcomb Pottery, rotating exhibits from the university's art collection, nationally recognized traveling exhibits and contemporary student and faculty exhibits. Flanking the gallery entrance are two important Tiffany stained-glass triptychs depicting figurative scenes, 'The Resurrection' and 'The Supper at Emmaus.'
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Ogden Museum of Southern Art
The excellent Ogden Museum of Southern Art displays a vast collection of modern artwork as well as definitive early outsider art, like that of Clementine Hunter. Henry Hobson Richardson designed the intricate stone annex.
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Perrin Benham Gallery
Typifying the neighborhood's exciting sensibilities, this small gallery features some locally renowned painters, but really makes its mark with stellar works by lesser known artists. A case in point is the Brazilian painter Mauro Tambeiro, who the gallery has introduced to North America. Tambeiro's lush technique and warm, jazzy images are a soothing tonic against the desolation so much in vogue in contemporary New Orleans art.
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Porché West Gallery
In Bywater, this is the rustic shop and studio of photographer Christopher Porché West. Pathos defines Porché West's black-and-white images of the people of New Orleans, and his photos of the Mardi Gras Indians are among the best. Call for an appointment.
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Presbytère
Although architect Gilberto Guillemard originally designed the Presbytère to be a rectory for the St Louis Cathedral in 1791, the building was never directly used by the church after it was completed in 1813. Instead, the cathedral administrators rented the building to the city for use as a courthouse before selling it to them in 1853. Ownership was transferred to the Louisiana State Museum in 1911.
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Preservation Resource Center
For anyone with a special interest in the architecture of New Orleans, this center is a great place to stop to get a sense for the lay of the land. The PRC is a nonprofit organization whose chief mission is to restore and revitalize New Orleans' historic neighborhoods. Its headquarters, in the expansive Leeds-Davis building, has a street-level museum. The display is modest, but manages to impart key information in a very straightforward manner.
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Rodrigue Studio
Cajun artist George Rodrigue's gallery is the place to go to see examples of his unbelievably popular 'Blue Dog' paintings. He just keeps painting that darn dog. Look for topical works, in which the dog quietly comments on the post-Katrina issues.
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Simon Of New Orleans
Local artist Simon (no last name) has made a name (though only a first name) for himself by painting groovy signs that are hung like artwork in restaurants all over New Orleans. You'll probably recognize the distinctive stars, dots and sparkles that fill the spaces between letters on colorfully painted signs such as 'Who Died & Made You Elvis?' The gallery is a ramshackle indoor/outdoor affair. Out back, a tabletop box contains hand-painted Zulu coconuts - collectors' items in these parts.
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Soren Christensen Gallery
This impressive space showcases the work of nationally renowned painters and sculptors. The gallery is known for its nontraditional sensibility.
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Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
Just outside the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Besthoff Sculpture Garden opened in 2003 with some 45 pieces from the world renowned Besthoff collection. The garden collection is growing - 55 works at the latest count - and includes mostly contemporary works by such artists as Antoine Bourdelle, Henry Moore, and Louis Bourgeois.
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Thomas Mann Gallery I/O Jewelry
The 'IO' in this gallery's name stands for 'insightful objects.' The local craftsman Thomas Mann specializes in jewelry and sculpture, and his gallery is a smorgasbord of glass and metal. Mann's necklaces and bracelets make nice gifts.
