The West Side Journal On June 5th, 2021 the West Baton Rouge Museum will open the Art by Bourgeois: Douglas Bourgeois exhibition. Bourgeois is represented by Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bourgeois’ work expresses popular culture in a vivid manner as evidenced in Queen Latifah’s Party, which will be among the many pieces on display. A Gonzales…
by Doug MacCash for The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate The year 2020 has been a tangle of medical, political, social, economic and ecological trouble. There’s no getting around it. But down on Julia Street, the group exhibit “Art in the Time of Empathy” at Arthur Roger Gallery brings a touch of solace to the situation…
As his global fame has grown, local artist Douglas Bourgeois’ paintings have entranced many art lovers while leaving some baffled. How can such diverse subjects look so at home in the same canvas? He once told an interviewer, “To me, a heart-shattering soul song is as transcendent as a Giotto fresco or an Emily Dickinson or William Blake poem.”
You don’t need to be an art buff to appreciate the New Orleans Museum of Art’s most recent exhibition: “Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans.” Pride of Place celebrates art collector and gallery owner Arthur Roger’s personal collection that he gifted to the museum.
The New Orleans Museum of Art is about to begin a John Waters film festival to celebrate a gift of photographs and a sculpture by the movie maker – part of a much larger gift from gallery owner Arthur Roger.
“Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans” an exhibition of works is on view at New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibition is a narrative about space, identity, and a sense of belonging in New Orleans’ contemporary art scene over the course of the last four decades. The selection of works on display showcases renowned art collector and gallery owner Arthur Roger’s entire personal art collection which he has gifted to the Museum.
When Arthur Roger launched his gallery in 1978, there were only a handful of others focused on new art. The scene has expanded greatly since then, but Roger has more than kept abreast of the ever-changing art world through the years, as we see in this sprawling new exhibition of works from his personal collection, which he donated recently to the New Orleans Museum of Art.
[Arthur Roger’s] donation — paintings, sculpture and photography by local and national luminaries of modern art — comprises a new NOMA exhibit, “Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans.” The exhibit opens Friday and runs through Sept. 3. In the exhibit’s 143-page catalog, museum Director Susan M. Taylor describes the gift as “transformational.” It “significantly expands” NOMA’s contemporary art holdings and “reaffirms the museum’s commitment to the work of local New Orleans artists,” she said.
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.
In spite of his relative seclusion in rural Louisiana, Douglas Bourgeois never wants for inspiration. On almost every inch of wall space in his simple cottage in St. Amant hangs the artwork of his friends and contemporaries. His art studio, lined with orderly shelves of assorted objets, could double as a curio shop. His curiosity lies at the heart of his creative vitality; the bold colors and elaborate and peculiar details of his paintings indicate a man who is dazzled by the world around him.