Arthur Roger Gallery

Tonight at NOMA After Hours, Arthur Roger will join former NOMA Director John Bullard for a conversation celebrating the life and work of Robert Gordy.

The discussion accompanies Robert Gordy: Outside the Mainstream, NOMA's first in-depth presentation of the artist's work in more than four decades.

Born in New Iberia in 1933, Gordy studied at LSU, Iowa State, Yale, and with Hans Hofmann before spending years living and working in places as varied as Mexico, Florence, Ibiza, San Francisco, and New York. Yet it was New Orleans that became his home. As Gordy later reflected, the city was "the right distance between the womb and the world."

Over the course of his career, Gordy developed one of the most distinctive artistic voices to emerge from Louisiana. Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Art Deco, African art, Matisse, and Cézanne, he created rigorously structured compositions defined by bold color, repeated motifs, and simplified human forms. His work moved fluidly across painting, drawing, printmaking, and monotype.

During his lifetime, Gordy achieved national and international recognition, exhibiting in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and abroad, including participation in the 1973 Whitney Biennial. Yet his work has remained surprisingly underexamined in recent decades.

Drawn from NOMA's collection, the Robert Gordy Estate, and important private collections, "Outside the Mainstream" offers a rare opportunity to experience the breadth of Gordy's achievement and to reconsider his place within American art.

We hope you'll join Arthur Roger and NOMA tonight for the conversation, and if you haven't yet seen the exhibition, we encourage you to visit before it closes.

NOMA After Hours
Fri, June 5th from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Conversation begins at 6:30 PM
New Orleans Museum of Art

More info: https://noma.org/event/noma-at-night-celebrate-robert-gordy-outside-the-mainstream/

We're thrilled to host an artist talk with Dr. Fahamu Pecou on Wednesday, May 27, 6:30–8:30pm at Arthur Roger Gallery — free and open to the public.

Pecou will be in conversation with New Orleans poet Patterson about his current exhibition, "God Snapped When She Made Water… and Black Women." The show brings together paintings, works on paper, and sculptural "Fly(Girl) Whisks" — ceremonial objects reimagined through human hair, braids, and beads — to honor Black women as architects of culture, style, and spiritual life. Drawing from Yoruba tradition and Black aesthetics, the work reclaims what society has too often dismissed as sacred.

The exhibition is on view through June 27. Come for the talk, stay for the work.