Tuesday–Sunday, October 1–30, 2010, 2 p.m.
Sunday, October 31, 2010, 11 a.m. and 2 & 3 p.m.
533 Royal Street
Admission is $5, free for THNOC members.
Historic Haunts is intended for an adult audience.

Infamous figures such as Madame Lalaurie, Marie Laveau, and Jean Lafitte are featured on the tour, which also cites research conducted at the Williams Research Center to expand on several aspects of New Orleans history, including the yellow fever epidemics, the plaçage system, casket girls, pirates, and more.

The guided tour ties each location and theme with items in The Collection’s Louisiana History Galleries and reveals the city’s more colorful and mysterious past.

A New Orleans treasure, jazz trumpeter Lionel Ferbos started in the early 1920s around the time Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton burst onto the national scene. A hard worker and determined musician, Ferbos sharpened his skills under the guidance of world-renowned teacher, Paul Chalingny. The young Ferbos was a rising star during the 1930s and played with the likes of Walter “Fats” Pichon and Sidney Desvigne. Ferbos later joined the legendary New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra in the late 1960s with musicians William Russell, Paul Crawford, Orange Kellin, John Robichaux, Walter Payton and band founder Lars Edegran.   

Born in New Orleans in 1911, Lionel Ferbos recently celebrated his 99^th birthday. Now in his centennial year, Ferbos is the oldest performing jazz musician in New Orleans and regularly takes the stage to prove that age is just a number.

On Tuesday September 14, The Historic New Orleans Collection and Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse at the Royal Sonesta Hotel will celebrate the remarkable history of this living jazz legend with two French Quarter events. “A Conversation with Lionel Ferbos” will be presented from 6 until 7:30 p.m. at the Williams Research Center, located at 410 Chartres Street. The interview will be conducted by Jason Berry, author of Up From the Cradle of Jazz. The WRC is home to several notable jazz collections including the William Russell Jazz Collection, the Frederic Ramsey Jr. Papers and the Harold Battiste Papers. This event provides jazz lovers with an opportunity to hear Ferbos recount his fascinating life in his own words. Reservations for the lecture are highly recommended. Please call (504) 523-4662 or email wrc@hnoc.org.

At 8 p.m., immediately following the oral presentation, guests are invited to Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse, at 300 Bourbon Street, for a musical “Tribute to Lionel Ferbos.” The concert will feature Jason Marsalis with trumpeters Irvin Mayfield, Shamarr Allen and other special guests. Both the concert and the oral presentation are free and open to the public.  Don’t miss this rare opportunity to be a part of history. 

 “Lionel Ferbos is a true living legend of jazz,” said Priscilla Lawrence, executive director of The Historic New Orleans Collection.  “His experiences bridge the gap from the first generation of New Orleans jazz artists to the current performers, and we are delighted to join Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse and the Royal Sonesta Hotel to present his story.” 

Founded in 1966, The Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, research center and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South. Located in the heart of the French Quarter, The Collection offers tours, free rotating exhibitions, a research facility and a museum shop. For more information, visit www.hnoc.org or call (504) 523-4662.

Audiences will feel right at home at Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse at the landmark Royal Sonesta Hotel located in the heart of the historic French Quarter. Now, more than ever, the hotel is “the” destination of choice for all visitors seeking an authentic music and travel experience in the Big Easy. For more information on the Royal Sonesta Hotel, call (504) 586-0300 or visit www.royalsonestano.com.

Friday, November 19
Show: 6–8 p.m.; Doors: 5:30 p.m.
Admission is $10, free for THNOC members*, and includes
3 complimentary beverages.
Guests must be 21 or older to enter.
*Memberships begin at $35.00 per household.

Now in its third year, Concerts in the Courtyard offer budget-friendly opportunities to enjoy a favorite New Orleans artist and cocktail in a beautiful courtyard setting. All shows are held at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Royal Street complex, 533 Royal Street. The Collection’s exhibition and gift shop are open to guests during concerts.

The fall series will conclude on November 19 with a performance by Paul Sanchez and selections from NOLA Brewing Co.

Friday, October 15
Show: 6–8 p.m.; Doors: 5:30 p.m.
533 Royal Street
Admission is $10, free for THNOC members*, and includes 3 complimentary beverages.
Guests must be 21 or older to enter.
*Memberships begin at $35.00 per household.

Now in its third year, Concerts in the Courtyard offer budget-friendly opportunities to enjoy a favorite New Orleans artist and cocktail in a beautiful courtyard setting. All shows are held at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Royal Street complex, 533 Royal Street. The Collection’s exhibition and gift shop are open to guests during concerts.

The fall series continues on October 15 with a performance by Jason Marsalis. Cocktails TBA.

Friday, September 24
Show: 6–8 p.m. Doors: 5:30 p.m.
533 Royal Street
Admission is $10, free for THNOC members*, and includes 3 complimentary beverages.
Guests must be 21 or older to enter.
*Memberships begin at $35.00 per household.

 Now in its third year, Concerts in the Courtyard offer budget-friendly opportunities to enjoy a favorite New Orleans artist and cocktail in a beautiful courtyard setting. All shows are held at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Royal Street complex, 533 Royal Street. The Collection’s exhibition and gift shop are open to guests during concerts.

The fall series opens on September 24 with a performance by clarinetist Tim Laughlin and cocktails from Old New Orleans Rum. 

Presented by Toyota on behalf of the redesigned 2011 Avalon, Museum Day is a celebration of culture, learning and the dissemination of knowledge. The event reflects the spirit of the magazine, and emulates the free-admission policy of the Smithsonian Institution’s Washington, DC-based properties. Doors will be open free of charge to Smithsonian magazine readers and Smithsonian.com visitors at museums and cultural institutions nationwide.

Museum Day 2010 is poised to be the largest to date, outdoing last year’s record-breaking event, when more than 300,000 museum-goers and 1,300 venues in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico participated.

As a Museum Day 2010 participant, The Historic New Orleans Collection will offer ticket holders free admission to its guided tours. Visitors will be able to choose from the Louisiana History Galleries Tour, the Williams Residence Tour or the Courtyards and Architecture Tour, each offered at 533 Royal Street at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. 

The Louisiana History Gallery Tour has been described as one of the best introductions to the area. The tour traces the region’s development from settlement through the present, and highlights include original documents from the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase, items from the Battle of New Orleans and decorative arts from the area.

The Williams Residence showcases the elegant French Quarter home of the institution’s founders, General and Mrs. L. Kemper Williams, who purchased the 1889 townhome in the late 1930s and furnished it with items from their world travels.

The Courtyards and Architecture Tour uses the historical structures comprising The Collection’s Royal Street complex to illustrate the numerous architectural styles seen throughout the Vieux Carré, including a Creole Cottage, an American side-hall townhome and a Creole-Italianate townhome.

This year, Toyota will enhance the Museum Day experience both in Smithsonian magazine and online, with elements like the “Featured Five,” a listing that encourages visitors to learn about and visit participating museums and venues. Additionally, for each visitor who inquires about the new Toyota Avalon online, Toyota will donate $1—up to $10,000 total—to museum programming nationwide.

How to Get Your Museum Day Ticket
Visit www.smithsonian.com/museumday to download your Museum Day ticket. Attendees must present the ticket to gain free entry to participating institutions. One ticket provides museum access for two people, and one admission card is permitted per household. Listings and links to participating museums can also be found at www.smithsonian.com/museumday.  

Participating Louisiana Museums
At the time of distribution, 10 Louisiana institutions have signed on to participate in Museum Day 2010:  The Historic New Orleans Collection, the American Italian Museum & Research Library, House of Broel’s Victorian Mansion and Dollhouse Museum, Longue Vue House and Gardens, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the National World War II Museum, all of New Orleans; Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum (Lafayette); the Lafayette Science Museum; Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum (Madisonville); and the LSU Museum of Art (Baton Rouge).

The Fine Print
Only one Museum Day ticket per household is permitted. One ticket gains entry to only one participating museum. Only an official Museum Day ticket is eligible for free entry. Official tickets can be found on the Museum Day website, www.smithsonian.com/museumday.

The Collection will present two screenings of “Under These Same Stars—The Céladon Affair” Saturday, September 25, at 9:30 a.m. and at 1 p.m., at the Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street. Admission to each screening is $5.

After each screening Ekberg, Dan Johnson (director of the film), Bob Streit (screenwriter, actor, and associate producer), and Molly Johnson (associate producer, costume director, and production coordinator) will discuss the film and take questions from the audience.     

Admission is $5. Reservations are encouraged and may be made by calling (504) 523-4662 or by e-mailing wrc@hnoc.org.     

Under These Same Stars—The Céladon Affair
In 1773, Illinois was English, Missouri was Spanish territory and French colonists had established the oldest town west of the Mississippi: Ste. Genevieve. African and Native American slavery was commonplace and casual there: a male slave might travel freely and carry a gun with which to hunt for his master’s supper; a female slave might find herself transformed from slave to slave owner on her wedding day. Native and French intermarriage, while frowned upon by some of the social elite, occurred with regularity. And yet, the social hierarchy of French colonial culture and the economic realities of the slave trade often prevented a poor hunter from buying a slave and a slave woman from marrying the man she loved. Based on the book Stealing Indian Women by historian Dr. Carl Ekberg and shot in the hills of rural Southern Illinois and in the historic homes of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri and Cahokia, Illinois, “Under These Same Stars—The Céladon Affair” tells the true story of a slave woman’s choice between familial and romantic love, and a hunter’s struggle between obeying the law of the land and obeying the higher law demanded of those who would choose personal freedom.

Céladon, a skilled, 1/2 French, 1/2 Native American hunter, has tired of life in town. He’s fallen in love with Marianne, a full blooded Pawnee slave woman. With each return from the hunt he courts her and urges her to run away with him into the wilderness. She loves him, but refuses to leave her sons, both too young for such a journey. In a last ditch effort to convince Marianne to run away, Céladon invites her to a party across the Mississippi in Kaskaskia. He hopes that removing her from Ste. Genevieve might persuade her to run further with him, but this brief taste of freedom fails to do the trick. At the party, Lissette, a fellow slave, reveals to Marianne her mistreatment at the lecherous hands of the British soldiers in the nearby garrison and states emphatically her desire to run far away. Céladon overhears their conversation and a fall back plan begins to take shape in his mind. Rejected by Marianne, Céladon helps Lissette flee Kaskaskia. Within hours, tragedy strikes. Interrogations are conducted. A manhunt ensues. Partygoers are arrested as possible conspirators and the bite of leg irons upon their ankles puts their plight in stark perspective. Will Céladon return for Marianne? Will Marianne leave her children and flee into the wilderness if given a second chance? To find out, return with us to an America at once familiar, forgotten and not so far away: “Under These Same Stars.”

Now through through December 11, 2010, more than 20 examples of Louisiana-made furniture from the 18th and early 19th centuries are on display at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street in the French Quarter. The pieces are on loan from Magnolia Mound Plantation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Today Magnolia Mound is surrounded by an urban setting, but the plantation was once the center of a 900-acre sugar and cotton operation with frontage on the Mississippi River. The main house was built ca. 1791 as a small settler’s house. In the early 1800s, Armand Allard Duplantier, a prominent planter who had served in the American Revolution as General Lafayette’s aide-de-camp, enlarged and renovated the original structure. Currently, the 16-acre site is operated as a museum by the Baton Rouge Recreation and Parks Commission.

While the facility is closed for improvements, furniture from Magnolia Mound will be available to audiences in the New Orleans area. Examples on display include elegant armoires, Campeche chairs, children’s furniture, and a rare writing table. Accompanying the furniture are several photographs of furnished rooms at Magnolia Mound by Steve Gross and Sue Daley from their publication Creole Houses: Traditional Homes of Old Louisiana (Abrams, 2007), illustrating how the structure and its contents are usually displayed.

The Williams Research Center is open Tuesday–Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to the public and is presented in anticipation of The Collection’s forthcoming book Furnishing Louisiana: Creole and Acadian Furniture, 1735–1835 (Winter 2010). For more information, call (504) 523-4662 or visit www.hnoc.org.

All issues from fall 1999 to the present are available online as PDF files. The 2010 Summer Quarterly is now available featuring the lifetime accomplishments of designer Mignon Faget. The Historic New Orleans Collection is celebrating her achievement with the exhibition Mignon Faget: A Life in Art and Design. The exhibitions opens September 22, 2010 and continues through January 2, 2011

photo credit: detail from Mignon Faget in her studio
by Michael P. Smith, ca.1979; photo print
on loan from the personal collection of Mignon Faget