French Quarter Life
People and Places in the Vieux Carré
Artistic impressions of New Orleans’s most iconic neighborhood
520 Royal Street
Seignouret-Brulatour Building
3rd Floor
Included with free museum admission
“Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour—but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and who knows what to do with it?”
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
For more than 150 years, artists from around the world have worked to capture and share their impressions of New Orleans’s most iconic and historic neighborhood. This exhibition gathers paintings from the museum’s permanent collection, including gifts from Louisiana art collector Laura Simon Nelson. From the bustle of the French Market to the beauty of Jackson Square, these artworks explore the streets, buildings, and people of the French Quarter through time and a variety of techniques.
Explore the Virtual Exhibition
Shop the French Quarter Life Collection
Shop our curated selection of art prints from the French Quarter Life exhibition, now available at the Shop at the Collection.
Related Stories
In Rolland Golden’s Sketchbook, a Changing, Timeless French Quarter
The New Orleans artist’s midcentury sketches of the Vieux Carré form a charming time capsule, showing how much has changed—and how much has stayed the same.
“One of the Great Literary Curiosities” of French Quarter Bohemia Turns 100
With a foreword by William Faulkner and clever portrait drawings, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles is an offbeat who’s-who of 1920s New Orleans.
Related Collection Highlights
Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar” Typewriter
Working on a black Remington, Williams wrote his masterpiece in a French Quarter apartment near the Desire streetcar line.
Pops Whitesell Photographs
The artist was an important figure in the French Quarter Renaissance, an effort by artists, authors, and architects to preserve and reinvigorate life in the historic neighborhood.
Related Books
Garden Legacy
by Mary Louise Mossy Christovich and Roulhac Bunkley Toledano
with a foreword by S. Frederick Starr
Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere
by Richard Sexton
with essays by Jay D. Edwards and John H. Lawrence
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