By Dave Walker, communication strategist for The Historic New Orleans Collection Many of the subjects of George Dureau’s photographic portraits look directly at the camera’s lens. “I see you,” their eyes say. “See me.” The faces the viewer sees are often those of “othered” people — Black people, queer people, little people, naked people, people missing…
by Sylvie Contiguglia for Arte-Walk Following a quiet summer, Arthur Roger Gallery is awakening with a bang. Its latest show Art in the Time of Empathy features seventy artists represented by more than one hundred works of art including paintings, sculptures, photographs and site specific installations. A playful series of shoe-mask from Maxx Sizeler leads to a spacious space lined…
A new show at Arthur Roger Gallery provides an unprecedented opportunity to compare work by George Dureau and Robert Mapplethorpe, two of the most important figurative photographers of the 20th century. In a just world, the two artists would enjoy equally significant reputations. But the general art historical line holds that the New Orleans-based Dureau’s photographs exist almost as a kind of footnote or sidebar to those of the more well-known Mapplethorpe, whose fame and notoriety have only increased since his death in 1989, while Dureau’s reputation has been mostly limited to local and specialized circles during the same period.
The Julia Street gallery owner donated his art collection to NOMA, and the show says as much about Roger as the art he has collected.
Flamboyant as his paintings and photographs, George Dureau gained worldwide acclaim for his depictions of the human figure in all of forms. Dureau was born in Midcity and lived much of his adult life as a major character the French Quarter. Dureau may be best known internationally as a photographer.
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.
Over the years, Arthur Roger nurtured artists through his art gallery opened in 1978 and in doing so, helped shape and promote the art scene of his native city. Joining the list of benefactors, he recently gifted his sizable art collection accumulated over four decades to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The eighty-seven objects, including paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, are on display this Summer for the exhibition Pride of Place: The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans, curated by Katie Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at NOMA.
[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.
The Arthur Roger Gallery is very pleased to be a part of Art Miami this year. At Booth B100, we are exhibiting works by John Alexander, Luis Cruz Azaceta, David Bates, Jacqueline Bishop, Douglas Bourgeois, Robert Colescott, Stephen Paul Day, Lesley Dill, James Drake, Troy Dugas, George Dureau, Lin Emery, Vernon Fisher, Tim Hailand, Whitfield Lovell, Deborah Luster, Gordon Parks, Holton Rower, and Amy Weiskopf.