Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans (on view June 23–September 3, 2017) celebrates Arthur Roger’s gift of his entire personal art collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibition catalogue features an important essay by William Fagaly, Personal Recollections: Contemporary Art in New Orleans.
Dawn DeDeaux opens a new exhibition May 28, 2017 as part of the grand opening of Building 6 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
On June 1, Arthur Roger’s personal collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and mixed media pieces will be taken off his walls, packed away and carted over to the New Orleans Museum of Art. He recently donated more than 80 pieces to the museum, including works by national and regional artists such as Luis Cruz Azaceta, Willie Birch, Douglas Bourgeois, Robert Colescott, George Dureau, Robert Gordy, Deborah Kass, Catherine Opie, Robert Polidori, Holton Rower and John Waters, among others.
Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans showcases renowned art collector and gallery owner Arthur Roger’s transformational gift of his entire personal art collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Spotlighting one of the city’s most groundbreaking contemporary art collections, the exhibition explores the rise of modern and contemporary art in New Orleans.
Arthur Roger, 432-434 Julia St., leads with a one-two punch: Edward Burtynsky’s cerebral and formally precise large-scale photographic landscapes in one gallery space will be accompanied a few doors down by Christopher Saucedo’s Pop art-inflected canvases and drawings in which classic American cartoon and superhero imagery is used as a trenchant commentary on current events.
Luis Cruz Azaceta’s current show at Arthur Roger Gallery, “On The Brink,” makes a statement on contemporary social and political issues. But first, one might get distracted by the artist’s flashy abstract style. Azaceta’s process of stacking primary and secondary colors in the form of polygonal shapes is eye-popping. Azaceta was born and raised in Cuba, to whose vibrant culture one may attribute his neon color palette.
[Arthur] Roger’s personal collection of more than eighty paintings, photographs, and sculptures reflects the gallery’s storied forty-year history as well as Roger’s skill and sophistication as an art collector. Bringing together artworks Roger has collected from the 1970s through today, Pride of Place unfolds as an evolving narrative about place, identity, and belonging in New Orleans’ contemporary art scene over the course of the last four decades.
I CLEARLY REMEMBER walking through Dawn DeDeaux’s installation MotherShip III: The Station near the intersection of Elysian Fields and St. Claude Avenues. It was close to the end of the biennial (as it was structured then) in the late afternoon, overcast, with temperatures in that New Orleanian limbo area between warmth and chill.
On the Brink seems an unusual title for a geometric abstract painting show. The crisp geometry of traditional art deco, op art or minimalist design, like the sleek lines of modern architecture and furniture, all epitomize a kind of optimistic rationalism, but Luis Cruz Azaceta was forever marked by the chaos that characterized the Cuban revolution and his life as a youthful refugee.
February 2017 Installation of Gene Koss’ Sculpture Wheel at the Ogden / Barnes Residence in New Orleans, Louisiana.