Every 10 years, the US government performs a census, gathering the country’s demographic data to assess representation and the distribution of resources. Similarly, museums should conduct periodic assessments of their holdings to understand what they have and identify any gaps to fill through future collecting. To that end, I recently undertook a census of HNOC’s portrait collection, surveying the demographic statistics of the people represented and the artists who created these works. By cataloging these details, the curatorial staff can gain a better understanding of our holdings and assess ..read more

The Roman Catholic Church has deep roots in New Orleans. In 1721, French military engineer Pierre Le Blond de la Tour designed the most skeletal parts of the colonial hub. One of these early plans depicts a church at the center, a common layout in European cities. This building was to become St. Louis Cathedral, the current seat of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The church’s central location attests to the fact that religious life was not limited to the confines of one’s home but was a key part of civic life. The Cathedral is marked with a cross in this 1722 plan of the city. (HNO ..read more

“The State of Louisiana has always been my favourite portion of the Union,” wrote French American naturalist John James Audubon, “although Kentucky and some other States have divided my affections.” Audubon’s time as a resident of Louisiana was relatively brief, but it saw a critical progress in his landmark research on the nation’s birds. Audubon (1785–1851) became interested in ornithology and drawing while living in France as a child and continued to study both after he moved to the US in 1803. After unsuccessful stints as a merchant in New York and Kentucky and then as a taxidermist for a ..read more

Since 2021, Walt Disney Imagineers have traveled to Louisiana to research the flora and fauna of the bayou and the unique culture of New Orleans, in hopes of bringing the next chapter of Princess Tiana’s story from the big screen to Disney theme parks. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, the highly anticipated new attraction at Frontierland at Magic Kingdom Park, opened for previews two weeks ago—with HNOC President/CEO Daniel Hammer in attendance, along with Saints players Drew Brees and Cam Jordan—and is available to the general public today. (Photo by Amanda Frentz, HNOC) The musical ride, a complete ..read more

We came for the armoires, but I left thinking about ground cornmeal. Each year the Historic New Orleans Collection sends a team of interns to document and catalog the material culture of historic sites through the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South program. Interns learn how to identify, photograph, and describe historic objects in public and private collections. On this particular day we were doing fieldwork near Lafayette, Louisiana, in a home filled with 19th-century cherry and cypress furniture. Curiously, it was during a pause in our work, just as we put down the camera and laptop for a b ..read more

In the age before mp3s, a person’s physical tape collection told a lot about them. You could discern a person’s musical tastes as well as what events they thought important enough to record for posterity. Home recording tapes with scant labels may contain a personal life moment, a previously undocumented cultural event, or a humble mix tape—all a mystery until played back on technology rapidly becoming obsolete as the brittle magnetic tape itself degrades over time. In the case of legendary New Orleans percussionist Alfred “Uganda” Roberts Jr. (1943–2020), his audio and video tape collection ..read more

Recently, Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart has been topped by an artist that has come as a surprise to some people: Beyoncé. Released in March 2024, Queen Bey’s Cowboy Carter is a country-inspired album, influenced by the country and zydeco music she heard growing up in Houston and attending rodeos with her grandfather. Like her first country song, “Daddy Lessons,” off 2016’s Lemonade, Cowboy Carter has stirred up conversation about Black artists’ place in the predominantly white world of contemporary country music—and their role in the genre’s history. In fact, Black musicians have played ..read more

Since 2015 THNOC has sought to acquire a collection of essays and family papers related to Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, the Creole physician and newspaperman who became a leader of the Reconstruction-era civil rights movement in New Orleans. This summer, they arrived at The Collection following a lengthy trip from France, where they had been passed down through the Roudanez family to Dr. Catherine Jouve, his great-granddaughter. This substantial collection—41 items including undated manuscript essays and family correspondence—offers a thrilling look at one of the most influential people in the ..read more

For centuries, Freemasons and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows have been central to civic, social, and cultural life in the United States. These fraternal orders’ roots go back to guilds formed by stonemasons and craftsmen in Europe near the end of the Middle Ages. In addition to overseeing standards for education and pay, guilds provided shelter and fellowship to members who were constantly on the move for work. Members of European fraternal orders traveled to colonies in the Americas, where their organizations thrived. By 1900, some 20 to 40 percent of men in the US were members of at l ..read more

Researching a makeover, teams of Disney Imagineers have made multiple trips to The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Williams Research Center during the past couple of years. Their goal is to transform the theme park attraction Splash Mountain into an immersive journey into the New Orleans of the 2009 animated film The Princess and the Frog. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is expected to debut in California’s Disneyland and Florida’s Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom in the later months of 2024. One of the research trips coincided with the 2022 exhibition Making Mardi Gras, which took visitors be ..read more