Renowned artist John T. Scott’s colorful kinetic sculpture captured the New Orleans spirit. In 1992, Xavier University art professor Scott, who lived from 1940 to 2007, was awarded a $315,000 John D. MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as a genius grant. It was a career-capping acknowledgement of Scott’s devotion to artistic experimentation and education that made him the city’s most influential modernist. Large-scale sculptures by Scott can be found in DeSaix Circle, City Park and at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

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Having an opportunity to view a gathering of Elemore Morgan paintings and drawings is like having an opportunity to visit with an old friend. Coming face to face with works ranging from small scale eight by five inch gouaches on paper to thirty-four by sixty inch acrylics on masonite offers an intimate experience infused by memories extending over more than fifteen ago when I first met the artist and his work soon after having moved to Louisiana from Ohio by way of Wyoming, New Mexico and California.

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Lesley Dill’s Poetic Visions: from Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan focuses on two bodies of work by the versatile artist: one is metallic sculpture and the other is an installation inspired by the late folk artist, preacher, and New Orleans phenomenon Sister Gertrude Morgan. This exhibit is what you dream those dusty Smithsonian displays could be. It is history gone wild; a show of visual might that makes one feel like a child entering Disneyland.

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All artists build imaginary spaces. James Drake is fully cognizant of the human tendency to project subjective history and meanings into the spaces he opens and constructs. Even before the visitor reaches the formal entry of his current exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art, the artist has placed three functional steel sculptures that announce his personal point of view. These include two benches and a graceful child’s table stacked with books of art and literature that are meaningful to him. There are monographs on Goya, Daumier, Rubens, the Mexican muralists, the novel “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, two books of poetry by Jimmy Santiago Baca, including “Que Linda la Brisa” (2001) with photographs by Drake, and the 2008 University of Texas survey of the artist’s 35-year career.

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