Identity theft: A rare painting damaged, a story half-told, and a reckoning about bias in art stewardship



Ever since the reopening of the French Quarter Galleries this past fall, a new text panel has accompanied one of THNOC’s rarest artworks, an 1837 oil painting by the New Orleans artist François Fleischbein. It depicts a woman of color with a modest smile. She wears a golden tignon (headwrap), earrings, and an elaborate, tiered lace collar and golden bow over a black frock.

New video explores Tennessee Williams's first home in New Orleans



In a new YouTube video, The Historic New Orleans Collection provides a behind-the-scenes look at 722 Toulouse Street, Tennessee Williams’s first residence in New Orleans when he arrived in 1938. Located in the heart of the French Quarter, the building—known as the Louis Adam House—is owned by THNOC and houses offices for its exhibition-preparation department. It is not open to the public; however, this video gives viewers a look at what those offices—as well as the attic where Williams used to live—look like today. 

Robert Tannen's vision of Jackson Square as a civic monument



This summer and fall, visitors to THNOC’s Tricentennial Wing can see New Orleans’s famed Jackson Square without ever leaving the building.

Joy in the French Quarter: Tennessee Williams scholars come home to THNOC



If you can imagine how a cat would feel in a cream-puff factory, you can imagine my joy at being back in the Quarter. 

—Tennessee Williams, letter to Audrey Wood, January 3, 1946

 

From the streets to the fairgrounds: Social aid and pleasure clubs carry the second line tradition to Jazz Fest



Twice each day at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the horns of a brass band blare, the seas of people part, and brilliant colors flash as a social aid and pleasure club begins to proceed around the fairgrounds. Dancing club members steal the scene, drawing the eyes of festivalgoers away from the stages as they recreate the sounds and sights of a New Orleans second line parade.

Master Sergeant Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams's Portrait in PTSD



In November 1941, a few days before the United States entered World War II in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tennessee Williams was already thinking about the impending global conflagration’s impact on his art.

The "dragons" of Norco: a game developer and a photographer discuss the complicated beauty of Louisiana's industrial corridor



Image courtesy of Geography of Robots/Raw Fury. Picture shows a scene from the Norco video game showing rider on a motorcycle driving a stretch of highway. On the driver's left is a row of industrial buildings.

A pandemic of pigs? Feral hogs are threatening cities from New Orleans to Hong Kong



They attacked Shakira in Barcelona. They’re “rampaging” in San Francisco. In November, they appeared in New Orleans East, tearing up yards and putting residents on edge. Proliferative, destructive, and seemingly irrepressible, feral hogs have rapidly become one of the most challenging invasive species on the planet. Once primarily a nuisance in rural areas, the “pig bomb,” as South Carolina­–based feral hog expert Jack Mayer calls it, has arrived at the doorsteps of cities like New Orleans. “The urban incursion by wild pigs is kind of a global phenomenon right now,” Mayer says.

The folklore of Danny Barker: Five of his most memorable characters



Danny Barker is remembered primarily as a banjo/guitar player and elder stateman of jazz, but he was also a committed writer and prolific storyteller. Barker began writing in the 1930s, during his years as a big band musician in New York City, and he continued for the rest of his life.

How "A Streetcar Named Desire" traveled beyond Elysian Fields to the entire world



“Undoubtedly our artistic climate is going to change through the world situation. . . . I think there is going to be a vast hunger for life after all this death—and for light after all this eclipse. . . . People will want to read, see, feel the living truth and they will revolt against the sing-song Mother Goose book of lies that are being fed to them.”

—Tennessee Williams, November 29, 1941 

Pages