In my world travels as The Design Tourist, I’ve visited many museums, some with marque names and international fame, others with local or regional collections. Museums that leave a lasting impression are not defined by size nor the prestige of their collections but rather how intimately they connect with and convey the local culture. A visit to the Louisiana Museum of Art is must-see for visitors wanting to connect with the creative soul of the city and state for its expertly curated mix of visual arts and crafts that convey Louisiana’s heritage and culture.
I first fell in love with the museum when it hosted an exhibit of artist Hunt Slonem’s iconic and collectible bunny paintings. The 2016 exhibit “Hunt Slonem: Antebellum Pop!” explored the New York- and Louisiana-based painter’s strong ties to Louisiana art and culture. I was instantly smitten with the museum’s curatorial eye— open-minded, and all-encompassing.
The LSU Museum of Art’s collection is eclectic and inclusive— a mix of known names such as pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and folk artist Clementine Hunter mixed with works by Louisiana artists and instructors at the Louisiana State University Art School.
Baton Rouge is home to Louisiana’s flagship university, Louisiana State University, where a prolific art school established in 1935, continues to produce renowned artists, ceramicists, painters, and sculptors. The LSU Art School is part of the College of Art + Design, which includes programs in art, art history, architecture, graphic design, interior design, and landscape architecture.
The LSU Museum of Art is both a repository and custodian of the art school’s legacy. The museum also exhibits fine furniture, silver, and commissioned portraiture from Louisiana’s early history and a thought-provoking contemporary art collection. I met up with Grant Benoit, the museum’s educator, to tour the latest exhibits showcasing ceramics. “We are a small museum with an amazing permanent collection such as our New Orleans Silver. We also put on ambitious curatorial projects for a museum of our size. As a University museum, we try to expand visitors’ perspectives and experiences outside of the city and surrounding areas,” Grant explains.
The exhibit, Form & Fire: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection features more than 100 American studio ceramic works by 69 artists, including important figures in ceramics history.
The museum says the ceramics are on long-term loan and promised as a gift by bequest to the LSU Museum of Art from E. John Bullard.
The Boneyard: The Ceramics Teaching Collection highlights LSU School of Art’s teaching collection with 200 bisque works from the classroom experience. LSU’s ceramics program ranks in top-ten nationwide and the museum’s ceramics exhibits will serve to help educate students.
“The name, Boneyard, refers to a collection of unglazed ceramics that serve as a library of ceramic forms for teaching. Unglazed ceramics are called bisque or bisqueware which is a prototype of wet clay that has been fired but unfinished and porous.
More than 200 bisque works are on display to imitate the classroom use of the boneyards,” Grant explains. “While LSU is renovating the studio arts building on campus, the museum is housing its ceramics works in The Boneyard. We invite visiting ceramics teachers to hold workshops and demonstrations in The Boneyard to share their techniques with the public. Visitors can attend and make ceramic objects to take home,” he adds.
In addition to the two galleries that host temporary exhibitions, the museum has four permanent collection galleries. “We rotate out pieces in the permanent collections every six months for preservation. We have 6500 individual art objects in the permanent collection that are on rotation,” Grant says.
The New Orleans Silver collection is one of the most extensive in the region and showcases a progression of different silver styles starting in the 1800s when the city was a major silversmithing center.
The museum’s permanent collection has two paintings by the artist, Clementine Hunter, on display— Gathering Gourds C. 1950, oil on heavy pasteboard and Negro Burial c. 1950, oil on heavy pasteboard.
The African American artist was born on the Cane River region of Louisiana in 1886 and is one of the best-known self-taught American artists. Clementine Hunter’s works are in museums around the United States and in the Louvre. She died in 1988, leaving a visual chronicle of life along the Cane River, painting on humble materials including cardboard boxes, scavenged pieces of lumber paper sacks, and milk bottles. Her straightforward, colorful forms often portrayed life events such as births, baptisms, wakes, weddings, and funerals.
“The landscape gallery has shifted to talking about the environment and includes traditional landscape themes and works that explore how we adjust to the changing environment. One example is the works of artist Ed Smith, a professor at LSU who does bird paintings. His paintings talk about environments and how birds are adapting to Louisiana’s eroding coastlines,” Grant says. Ed Smith’s work draws upon Louisiana’s beauty juxtaposed with its landscape of chemical plants and oil refineries.
The contemporary gallery features Louisiana artists, including Kelli Scott Kelley, professor of Art at LSU School of Art, who paints and creates mixed media environment scenes.
The Allies, 2008 acrylic on stitched canvas, is a large-scale stitched canvas representing Kelley’s long-standing relationship with Louisiana’s threatened bayous and swamps. Kelly herself was the model for the central character.
Dawn Dedeaux, a New Orleans artist, created a mixed media work reflecting water levels in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Her work, Over Six Feet of Water, from her series entitled Water Markers represents the floodwater levels reached in her neighbor’s homes.
The piece made of acrylic slabs with embedded digital images explores how to represent water working with highly polished acrylic slabs. Each work documents and memorializes an individual experience with Hurricane Katrina.
“Sonja Clark is an African American textile artist and her work is a new acquisition. The museum is finding connection points with the entirety of the community. This is part of an initiative to broaden the diversity of our collections,” Grant explains.
Lesley Dill’s wire sculpture, Word Queen of Itchy Water with Suspended Crown, 2007 wire, steel, is a fun conversation piece for museum visitors because it’s embedded with hidden text and letters.
The LSU Museum of Art has a robust calendar of public events including lectures and hands-on programs. To learn more check out the website.
