Making Mardi Gras
Sponsored by Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World and Kern Studios
January 6–May 8, 2022
Extended version: May 27–August 7, 2022
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
520 Royal Street, Tricentennial Wing, 3rd Floor
Free ticketed admission
About the Exhibition
You can feel it coming. A marching band cadence echoes from a mile away. Pounding drums and bright feathers flare from the Mardi Gras Indians just up the block. Months of painstaking glittering, marching, beadwork, and brushstrokes have led up to this moment, and you are ready to burst into the street. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
On January 6, 2022, The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Making Mardi Gras exhibition rambles its way into the museum's French Quarter galleries. This showstopping display invites visitors into the sprawling dens, late-night sewing sessions, and sweaty dance rehearsals where “The Greatest Free Show on Earth” is created and re-created each year among the city’s diverse communities. Explore the vibrant expression that only Carnival season can muster, as we meet up with 19th-century float artists, dawn-breaking skeleton gangs, and homebound house-float creators—stopping to admire costumes, royalty, and hand-painted coconuts.
This is the Mardi Gras that happens before we're watching, the Carnival that will wind through the city on Fat Tuesday, far from the intemperate Bourbon Street scene. Catch it before it passes.
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World and Kern Studios.
Curated Playlist
Get into the Mardi Gras spirit by listening to the playlist below, put together for this exhibition by DJ Soul Sister—founder and host of WWOZ’s Soul Power.
Object Spotlight
Take a deep dive into the history and traditions of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, which has signaled the start of Mardi Gras Day for two centuries.
In the videos below, Big Chief Bruce Sunpie Barnes, who created the skeleton suit for this exhibition, describes his creative process for designing and making the suit, traces the origins of the gang, and reflects on the demographic changes in the gang’s neighborhood, Tremé.
Historic films, old and new photographs, and live footage of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang coming out on Mardi Gras Day 2022 bring the rich narrative of this distinctive group to life.
Related Programming
Guided tour: A Closer Look … at Making Mardi Gras
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays | 11 a.m. Central Time
March 3–May 7, 2022
Admission: $5; free for THNOC members | advance tickets preferred
Join one of our interpretation assistants on a guided trip through the new Carnival exhibit, Making Mardi Gras, on view through May 8 in the Tricentennial Wing of The Historic New Orleans Collection at 520 Royal Street. This tour is an opportunity for guests to engage with and discuss the many efforts involved in creating the annual celebration. Participants can learn about the evolving traditions and the modern festivities that make New Orleans’ Carnival a world-famous event.
Related Stories
Highlights from the Disney Imagineers’ Carnival-themed show-and-tell at THNOC.
The Historic New Orleans Collection is your destination for all things Carnival in 2023!
A THNOC internship leads to the creation of an important tool for preserving and displaying Black Masking Indian suits.
THNOC houses hundreds of designs from the archives of Larry Youngblood and Carroll Pio Burtanog, two designers who outfitted Carnival kings, queens, and courtiers for decades. Here’s a look at some of their most outrageous creations.
Bruce Sunpie Barnes, Big Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, describes a Mardi Gras Black masking tradition.
Since the 1890s, Black Carnival clubs have presented debutantes at their elegant annual balls.
How does a krewe work? What does the king do? And what about all those beads? THNOC’s Visitor Services staff have the answers.
The photography of Making Mardi Gras shows snapshots of Carnival through time, from Big Chiefs to ‘tit Rex.
In these liner notes to a playlist curated for THNOC, DJ Soul Sister, the “queen of rare groove,” leads a tour of Mardi Gras through music history and her memories as a native New Orleanian.
Before Sharpe’s invention helped birth the entire signature-throw industry, he sailed around the world, sold paintings, wrote poetry, and studied ancient history.