NEW ORLEANS (press release) – The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) announced that the custom piano played by musical artist Jon Batiste during the Super Bowl LIX pregame show is now on view in the museum’s Lapis Center for the Arts. The vibrant and colorful grand piano features a design by artist and bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, who is Batiste’s wife.
“When art and music merge, we can see the power of creativity to define significant moments,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman director of NOMA. “We are delighted to share Suleika and Jon’s collaboration with visitors to NOMA.”
Before Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX game, Batiste performed the national anthem as part of a star-studded pregame lineup honoring New Orleans’s legendary music scene. A Louisiana native, Batiste is a seven-time Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-winning artist known for his dynamic work as a singer, songwriter, and composer. Visitors to NOMA will have the unique opportunity to see the custom piano featured in Batiste’s Super Bowl LIX performance.
The one-of-a-kind instrument, which features a painting with a butterfly motif, is one of many artistic collaborations between Batiste and Jaouad, who is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of “The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life” and “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted.” In 2024, Jaouad’s paintings were on view at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey, as part of the collaborative exhibition The Alchemy of Blood with Jaouad’s mother, artist Anne Francey.
“The butterfly is a symbol of metamorphosis and transformation, of uncertainty and hope, of fragility and strength. Change is possible,” said Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste. “Life is a series of coming-of-age arcs—you reenter the chrysalis and emerge transformed again and again, and art is a vehicle for that. We want folks to be inspired by this work and to come experience this piano while it’s at the New Orleans Museum of Art.”
The New Orleans Museum of Art is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Wednesdays, 12–7 p.m. Every Wednesday, museum admission is free for Louisiana residents courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative.
