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New Orleans area Arts
Actors
Authors
Art Schools & Supplies
Artists
Ballet
Choruses
Book Stores
Dance
Decorative Artists
Drama Lessons
Galleries
Literature
Louisiana Film Industry
Louisiana Film Tax Credits
Museums
Musicians
Opera, Opry & Orchestra
Organizations
Photographers
Theater, Live
Visual Artists
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New Orleans Artists
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Famous Artists in Louisiana
John James Audubon
John James Audubon, the namesake of New Orleans Audubon Park, was a naturalist and artist best known for his illustrated book, “The Birds of America”. The book contains 435  beautiful hand colored prints of North American bird species. “Birds of America” was so successful and critically acclaimed that London’s Royal Society made Audubon only the second American elected a “fellow” of the society. The first was Benjamin Franklin.
Born a French citizen in Haiti in 1785, Audubon was the son of Jean Audubon, a French plantation owner and Jeanne Rabin, a Louisiana Creole. His family left the island with the Haitian Revolution of 1788 and his family wound up back in France. In 1803, he left France to avoid being drafted into Napoleon’s army. He wound up back in America, became an American citizen, and in 1808, Audubon fell in love and married an American, Lucy Bakewell.
 The Starving Artist. There are lots of artists in New Orleans, and like any town that attracts young artists, New Orleans has its share of “starving artists” and that’s exactly what John James Audubon was when he arrived in New Orleans in 1820. Audubon and his wife had spent 12 years living in untamed Kentucky where he spent much of his time exploring the wilderness and sketching birds. His naturalist pursuits competed with his jobs. Broke and out of work, Audubon and his wife finally arrived in New Orleans where he made a living selling sketches and giving art lessons. In 1821, he lived at Oakley Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana where he continued to add to his collection of bird sketches.
“The Birds of America” After decades of sketching and painting hundreds of bird species in America, Audubon left for Great Britain in 1826 to find a publisher. He was unable to find an American publisher that believed in Audubon the artist. But in Britain and France, his works became a sensation. Between 1827 and 1838, Audubon worked with master engraver and printer, Robert Havell to publish a series of prints to be known as “The Birds of America”. The rest is history. As you can see, New Orleans has been a refuge for starving artists for at least two-hundred years.
Edgar Degas
 The famous French painter and sculpture, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas (1834-1917) was one of the most famous artist to ever live in New Orleans. He is considered to be one of the founders of Impressionism, the 19th century art movement known for paintings with vivid colors and represented by artists such as Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh.
Edgar Degas was born in Paris, France. In 1872, Degas came to New Orleans to visit his brother, René, a resident of the city. He remained in New Orleans for just over a year but during that time he painted his only work that would be purchased by a museum during Degas’ lifetime. That painting, “The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans” was painted in New Orleans 1873 and was purchased by the City Museum at Pau France, where it still resides today.
During his stay in New Orleans, Degas stayed at 2306 Esplanade Avenue, known today as the Degas House. Esplanade Avenue  separates the French Quarter, New Orleans original neighbor hood, from the Faubourg Marigny. Built by the French around 1800, the Faubourg Marigny is New Orleans’ second oldest neighborhood. Today, the Faubourg Marigny is considered New Orleans most bohemian neighborhood and is home to many of New Orleans artists and musicians. The Degas House is the only former home or studio of Degas in the world that is open to the public.
For websites of local artists.
Go to New Orleans Art and Artists
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Art Organizations in Louisiana & New Orleans
SEE ALL
The people of New Orleans and Louisiana are long time supporters of the arts. The New Orleans Opera Association, over 200 years old, began as the French Opera House and is the oldest opera association in the United States. The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, known as NOCCA is the premier institution for training young artists in New Orleans offerings training in dance, music, theatre, the visual arts, media arts and theatre. Many more New Orleans arts organizations focus on artists specializing in varying arts from sculpture to the photographic arts.
Go to Louisiana Art Organizations
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Many New Orleans photos courtesy of New Orleans Photographer Nicole Nichols
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New Orleans Artists - SEE ALL
The Art of Dianne Parks
New Orleans Artist, Painting
the New Orleans Life!
Born and raised in New Orleans and educated at the McCrady School of Fine Art in the French Quarter, artist Dianne Parks has been painting the interesting streets, unique food and serene swamps in and around New Orleans and South Louisiana for over 30 years.
Dianne excels at capturing the light, rhythm and romance that are the essence of New Orleans and South Louisiana.
On her website you can view and purchase her original paintings, Giclée limited edition prints, New Orleans prints, Louisiana bayou, swamp & boat prints, Northshore prints & New Orleans art posters. Also on pillows, cards and phone cases.
Visit the artist’s website at:
DianneParksGallery.com |
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New Orleans Artists - SEE ALL
New Orleans and Louisiana has been the home and inspiration of artists from John James Audubon to Edgar Degas. Most tourists are familiar with the New  Orleans portrait artists that line the wrought iron fence that surrounds Jackson Square in the French Quarter. These artists are the first face of the large New Orleans art community. New Orleans artists thrive all around town, with art galleries and artist communities stretching far beyond the French Quarter. Artists and art galleries can be found all across New Orleans in neighborhoods like the Faubourg Marigny, the Garden District District & Uptown to River Bend.
New Orleans has always had its unique, avant garde artists, from painters to sculptures, doing their own thing beyond the view of most tourists. If you have a lot of time to spend in New Orleans, and want to meet New Orleans artists, go beyond the French Quarter. Spend some time on Frenchmen Street or Royal Street in the Faubourg Marigny where artists from Louisiana and around the world, live, work and create. Before long, you’ll get the feel of what has beckoned artists to New Orleans and Louisiana since John James Audubon and Edgar Degas first arrived.
Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest Poster Art
A uniquely New Orleans form of art is the tradition of New Orleans prints, posters and poster art. Much like the French artist, Toulouse Lautrec, became  famous in large part from his Parisian poster art, many New Orleans artists have become celebrities of the New Orleans art world by way of poster art. Artists such as James Michalopoulos and Andrea Mistretta have created brilliantly colored, eye-catching, often surreal paintings for prints and posters celebrating Mardi Gras and the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Their prints have become their own art industry in New Orleans. The New Orleans Mardi Gras and New Orleans Jazz Festival prints and posters are themed around each year’s festivals. Collections of the yearly prints from the varying artists who create the themed prints and posters is often the first art hung on the walls of New Orleans homes.
New Orleans Photo Art has contributed greatly to the body of New Orleans prints and posters available to collectors of New Orleans art. Photos of popular New Orleans scenes and memorable New Orleans events are frequently featured in New Orleans art galleries and museums.
From classic French Quarter portrait painters to metal sculptors, over 100 New Orleans artists are on the New Orleans web.
Go to New Orleans Art, New Orleans Artists
New Orleans has many different kinds of artists.  New Orleans has a large community of artists that specialize in many different forms of art. There’s been a lot of debate as to what are the fine arts, visual arts, design arts, etc. and we wanted to organize the many New Orleans artists and their art into more useful categories. We’ve come up with three general categories of art and artists to help better organize New Orleans artists websites. They are:
Performing Arts (dance, ballet, music, opera, live theater, etc.)
Visual Arts (painting, drawing, photography, film, prints, lithographs, etc.) and
Decorative Arts and 3-dimensional  Arts. (sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, metal and glass crafting, textile art, wood working and furniture, etc.) We took a risk and included in this category any art form that is 3-dimensional or tactile including sculpture. There’s a lot of cross over between sculpture, metal crafting and wood working in Louisiana and we wanted these artists to be viewed together.
See more about the Performing Arts below
Go to New Orleans Visual Artists
Go to New Orleans Decorative Artists
Go to ALL New Orleans Artists
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Performing Arts in New Orleans
 New Orleans Opera, Opry, Orchestra, Ballet and Chorus
This collection of New Orleans area websites includes professional performing arts groups and performing arts venues that incorporate music in their performances. Included are professional and amateur ballet and opera companies, orchestras, choruses and even Louisiana country music oprys.
Go to New Orleans area Operas, Orchestras, Oprys, Ballet and Choruses
For New Orleans music websites from bands, musicians, DJs and live music clubs to New Orleans and Louisiana Music Festivals...
Go to New Orleans Music Guide
Live Theater in New Orleans
New Orleans loves live theater and there are many live theater venues in the area. From the venerable Le Petite Theatre in the French Quarter to the Cabaret Chat Noir on St Charles Ave. to the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University to performances by the Jefferson Parish Performing Arts Society in the Metairie suburbs, theater lovers in the New Orleans area have lots of places to go.
Go to New Orleans Live Theater
Le Petit Théatre du Vieux Carré also known as Le Petit or the Little Theater is the oldest continuously running community theater in America.  Le Petit was founded in 1916 and is located in the beautiful French Quarter of New Orleans. It is ideally situated on the corner of Jackson Square, at the intersection of St. Peter and Chartres streets. It’s the perfect charming location for the perfect charming theater. The historic corner building, dating back to 1797 in the Spanish colonial period, has undergone extensive renovations to become a fully equipped theater with a seating capacity of about 450 and a separate Children's Corner theater with a capacity of more than 120.
Le Petit offers a year-round schedule of six to eight productions a year. There are a wide range of performances and may include Broadway musicals, plays by famous playwrights from Shakespeare to Neil Simon , the works of native Louisiana and New Orleans playwrights and seminars and stagings during the annual Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival. The performers at Le Petit are all volunteers however many are professional performing artists in music, dance, stage, TV and film donating their talents for the theater and New Orleans.
The Southern Repertory Theater is for lovers of dramatic live theater with a Southern flair, there’s the Southern Repertory Theater. A professional regional theater company that produces regional and world premieres of new plays by Southern playwrights and new plays set in the South, the Southern Repertory Theater has been entertaining New Orleans theater goers for three decades.
We’ve included websites to over 25 New Orleans area performing arts websites including New Orleans theaters, theater groups and associations and children’s theaters.
Go to New Orleans Live Theater
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New Orleans Art Galleries - SEE ALL
Tourists to New Orleans often wander the back streets of the French Quarter, searching through small, hidden art galleries filled with works of art by New Orleans and Louisiana artists. They’ll find the popular traditional painted scenes of New Orleans historic buildings, French Quarter patios, streetcars and riverboats as well as paintings of rustic Cajun cabins and Louisiana bayous. New Orleans and Louisiana artists produce thousands of these popular works of traditional Louisiana art each year. In addition there are New Orleans arts and crafts pieces from Mardi Gras masks to voodoo dolls that are created by local artists and artisans and loved by tourists.
There are art galleries all around New Orleans that feature the works of the best New Orleans and Louisiana artists. Magazine Street in Uptown New Orleans, has several miles of small shops, many of which are some of New  Orleans best art galleries and antique shops with art pieces for sale. The Warehouse District, just across the central business district from the French Quarter, has numerous art galleries with works by the best local artists as well as works by internationally known artists. Art galleries can be found all around the city from the French Quarter to the Garden District to the Uptown neighborhoods to neighboring Metairie. Most New Orleans art galleries have online galleries with images of their collections of art for sale on their websites. Browse their websites and you’ll get a good idea of which art galleries in the New Orleans area have art that interests you!
Go to New Orleans Art Galleries
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New Orleans Museums - SEE ALL
New Orleans and Louisiana are home to a multitude of museums expressing the long and rich history and deep cultural heritage of the city and the state. As one of America’s oldest cities and the  colonial possession of both France and Spain, Louisiana and in particular, New Orleans has a history that fills several museums with art and artifacts from its long and fascinating past. Museums range from the small and exotic like the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum nestled away in the French Quarter to large and nationally important museums like the National D-Day Museum.
New Orleans Art Museums
The centerpiece of art museums in New Orleans and Louisiana is the New Orleans museum of Art which contains a rich collection of art by American and French artists. The New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center in the Warehouse District of New Orleans presents modern works of performing and visual arts. Other New Orleans art museums include the Ogden Museum of Southern Art at the University of New Orleans which has the world’s largest collection of Southern art and the Newcomb Art Gallery and Museum at Tulane University.
Go to New Orleans and Louisiana Museums
The New Orleans Museum of Art is the crown jewel of New Orleans museums. Located in New Orleans’ City Park, the New Orleans Museum of Art was established in 1910 as the Delgado Museum of Art with a gift of $150,000 from New Orleans  businessman Isaac Delgado. Isaac Delgado’s wish was to create a "temple of art for rich and poor alike". Indeed, the museum facade does closely resemble a classic Greek temple. Still known as the Delgado Museum to older folks in New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art is today commonly known simply as NOMA.
A nationally recognized fine arts museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art is known for its fine collection of American and French art. Paintings in the New Orleans Museum of Art include works by the famous French artists Degas, Renoir, Monet and Gauguin, the famous Spanish artist Picasso and the famous American artist Jackson Pollock. The museum’s art collection also includes works by Rodin, Pissarro, Miró and Dufy. The New Orleans Museum of Art also has a large collection of Japanese and African art and is regarded as the most comprehensive of fine arts museums in the Gulf South.
The New Orleans Museum of Art has hosted a variety of acclaimed exhibits, most notably the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb during the famous King Tut museum tour of the late 70s. After Hurricane Katrina, the museum hosted a large and sobering collection of photographic art that captured images from the aftermath of the storm.
New Orleans, Louisiana and American History Museums
New Orleans and Louisiana have a rich collection of historical museums. Begin with the Cabildo, the museum adjacent to Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. The Cabildo was built by the Spanish as the seat of power during their colonial rule. The Cabildo museum houses many Louisiana artifacts and even a rare Napoleon death mask. Other historical museums in the French Quarter include the Old US Mint, the Musée Conti Wax Museum, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, the VooDoo Museum, believed to be the only museum dedicated to VooDoo in the world, the Presbytere and the Historic New Orleans Collection with its vast collection of old New Orleans images.
Moving beyond the French Quarter you’ll find more New Orleans historical museums including the National D-Day and World War II museums, the Jackson Barracks Military Museum and the Confederate Museum, the second largest collection of Confederate artifacts in the United States. Louisiana historical museums include the Acadian Memorial Museum in Saint Martinville, Louisiana which depicts the story of the Louisiana Cajuns, the Mardi Gras Museum in Kenner, Louisiana and the
River Road African American Museum in Burnside, Louisiana.
The Musée Conti, the Historical Wax Museum of New Orleans, has been a favorite of locals and tourists alike since 1964. Of all the museums in  New Orleans, perhaps none better illustrates the history of New Orleans in a more entertaining fashion than the Musée Conti. Located on Conti Street in the French Quarter, the Musée Conti, depicts the history of New Orleans in artfully staged and eerily lifelike wax figures in their historical settings.
The museum’s dark corridors allow visitors to shut out contact with the modern world as they pass scene after scene of life size snapshots of New Orleans and Louisiana history. You’ll meet such historical figures as Napoleon Bonaparte ordering the sale of Louisiana to the fledgling United States and Andrew Jackson commanding American forces at the battle of New Orleans. The chronological order of the dramatic scenes teaches the museum visitor more of the history of New Orleans in an hour than can be learned in an entire school semester. The museum is a must for visitors truly interested in the unique history of a unique American city and is the favorite of all New Orleans museums for local school children.
We’ve collected websites for over 50 New Orleans and Louisiana museums from art and cultural museums to nature and historical museums. Also included are websites for children oriented museums and even Mardi Gras museums.
Go to New Orleans and Louisiana Museums
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Dance and Dance Classes in New Orleans - SEE ALL
New Orleans loves music and dancing to it! If you want to learn to dance or just be a better dancer, we’ve collected New Orleans websites that dancers will love. You can learn the Cajun two step alongside other lovers of Cajun music, learn ballroom & Latin dancing or even jazz, tap and classical ballet.
Many New Orleans area dance studios, especially dance studios catering to young students, offer a mix of the dance arts such as tap, modern dance  and ballet with athletic related classes such as gymnastics, cheer leading and tumbling. Other dance studios specialize in the athletic related arts such as gymnastics and cheer leading while others focus on specific dance arts such as ballet or jazz.
Also included in this category are non profit dance companies such as the New Orleans Ballet Association, Delta Festival Ballet and Tsunami Dance, the New Orleans modern dance company.
From classical ballet instruction to Irish folk dancing, there are many places around New Orleans to learn to dance.
Go to New Orleans Dance Classes, Gymnastics, Cheerleading & Tumbling
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Literary Arts in New Orleans - SEE ALL
New Orleans Authors, Literature, Literary Festivals & Book Stores
Where there’s artists & musicians, there’s writers. Whatever it is that attracts artists to New Orleans has also brought some of the country’s best writers. Truman Capote, William Faulkner  and Tennesse Williams all lived and wrote in New Orleans. Great writers have usually described their stays in New Orleans as some of their most content and productive years. In the past few decades several native New Orleans writers such as novelists Anne Rice (Interview with a Vampire) and John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces) and historians such as Steven Ambrose and Umberto Fontova have risen to national acclaim. Tennessee Williams is well represented in the New Orleans Authors websites category alongside native Louisiana authors and other notable authors who were residents of the Crescent City.
Go to New Orleans Authors, Literature & Book Stores
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