Working with natural elements like earth, wind, water and fire, the contemporary artists in Ear to the Ground show how nature can spur artistic innovation and spark new thinking about human culture and community. In their art, nature is not just as a resource to be protected or exploited, but rather a generative force with its own sentient power. Mining earth both as a material and a metaphor, the artists in this exhibition treat nature as a teacher: a model for negotiating the complexities of contemporary cultural life. Informed by a kind of elemental logic, their art envisions new ways we might relate to the natural world, as well as to one another. Drawn predominantly from NOMA’s permanent collection, Ear to the Ground features work by 18 artists across vastly different media, cultures and time periods who each reference earth and element in very different ways.

Sponsor: New Orleans Museum of Art

Against the Grain marks the first solo museum presentation of the experimental wood works of the American artist Mildred Thompson (1936-2003) in more than thirty years. An accomplished painter, sculptor, writer and musician, Thompson began creating her wood assemblages, which she called wood pictures, while living in Germany in the early 1960s. Thompson’s abstract work in wood went against the grain of the more representational and overtly political art of her time to offer more subtle reflections on history, memory and place. These sculptural assemblages—which represent a unique contribution to the art of this period—combine found and manipulated wood segments into sophisticated, expressive compositions that are located between painting, sculpture and collage. Often created from wood sourced in the forests of rural Germany, Thompson explored the material’s natural variations to create sensitive juxtapositions of texture, color and form.

Sponsor: New Orleans Museum of Art

Since the founding of the United States, American painters have sought to capture the essence of the country on canvas. From Sea to Shining Sea: 200 Years of American Art presents works that span the first two centuries of our rich history, highlighting the variety and strength of American artistic achievement from the colonial era through World War I.

Opening this spring at M.S. Rau’s French Quarter gallery, the comprehensive American Fine Art exhibition features paintings, watercolors, and drawings from over 60 artists. Among the most well-known are John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Edward Hopper.

Together, the works on display represent the wide variety of styles that have developed in our country, ranging from Colonial Art to the Hudson River School and Tonalism to American Impressionism and the Ashcan School. Together, they successfully capture the cultural moment of their respective ages, perfectly defining on canvas the character and very essence of American life throughout the centuries.

In Partnership with SEI

Sponsor: M.S. Rau Antiques