Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans — Attraction in New Orleans

I love museums, especially art museums. But: this Contemporary Arts Center was such a disappointment for content. The building is good, the location in the Central Business District by the WWII Museum is great, however the actual quality of the exhibits we saw was not worth the sacrifice of an afternoon in New Orleans where we could have been doing other things. I'm glad the exhibits were celebrating black identity and life in New Orleans, but both exhibit levels presented a very homogenous way of showing that through photography. There were some excellent photographs, but the majority were more at a student art exhibit level. If the curator had been more selective, more creative with adding in related art in other mediums which complemented the exhibit theme while adding depth to the exhibit, it would have had a much greater impact on us. This felt like an exhibition space of good intentions but not enough passion and excellence in execution. Maybe the CAC does not have a permanent collection, but instead offers only rotating temporary exhibits? Perhaps there have been other very exciting exhibits which we missed, but which still make the CAC worth catching when the right exhibit comes along. I hope so, because we all need more art museums in the world not less, and this must have been very expensive to found and patronize! And there are so many artists out there who deserve representation that they...

Man, we go way back. Lol that’s not true, it’s only like what 4-6 years back or something? I don’t know and don’t really care-google just suddenly presented me w the opportunity to say hi and give my opinion. So yah! If you are a tourist and are looking to do something after you visited the WWII museum (cool let’s canonize war) then the CAC is your joint. You can find regurgitated traveling exhibitions that might be installed professionally (holler at my peeps) but come on-get some originality. There was once a great art-specific bookshop there-the only in all of the vastly creative city-but that’s gone. Basically every good local artist that has lived in New Orleans has worked there or was a founder, but there still aren’t sick immersive installations that show what New Orleans is capable of. I don’t know, maybe it’s the architecture of the building-no diss-it’s just clearly not a space committed to displaying what makes New Orleans artists different from the rest of the country/world. Time’s...

The surprises in this museum start when you walk in the front door. Floor joists for the upper floors are exposed, with the floor cut away to create an atrium in front of the brick front.

We liked seeing the antique cameras scattered throughout the photo exhibit, and the room tricked out to look like a darkroom, with red light, the b&w photos hung by clothes pins, and an old enlarger.

Another space held a couch, bookcases and photographs on the wall. It was meant to suggest grandma’s living room. It was Irvin, who works on the second floor, who pointed out what the furnishings were meant to signify in that gallery.

Irvin was fun to talk to about art at the Contemporary Arts Center, art in general. He explained the New Orleans cultural references in the photographs: Second Line, local Native Americans and the clubs (A club was recreated in one of...