News from NOMA

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noma-fridayFRIDAY NIGHTS AT NOMA
5-9 p.m. June 19, 2015

5-8 p.m.: Art on the Spot
5:30 to 8:30pm: Music by Daniele Spadavecchia
6:30pm: Film: American Experience: New Orleans

About American Experience: New Orleans
“New Orleans” is a fascinating portrait of one of America’s most distinctive and beloved cities: a small French settlement surrounded by water that ultimately would become the home of America’s biggest party, Mardi Gras, and its most original art form, jazz; the site of explosive struggles with both integration and segregation, and a proving ground for national ideas about race, class and equality; a mirror that reflects both the best and the worst in America. This “American Experience” film tells the story of this remarkable city through revealing first-hand interviews with New Orleans natives and scholars, as well as through rich archival photographic material and footage that was miraculously spared from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

About Daniele Spadavecchia
Daniele Spadavecchia with his charming and joyful stage presence brings Gypsy Jazz to New Orleans through the musical journey of his life. He loves to play acoustic gypsy jazz guitar, mixing swing with Mediterranean Flamenco and European ethnic music. He sings a selection of Italian, Latin and classic jazz repertoire. He was born in Italy where he performed for many years, before moving to New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, he relocated to Scottsdale, AZ and eventually San Diego before returning to the Crescent City.

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ARTFUL MINDS AT NOMA

noma1The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) will partner with Poydras Home to launch an art exploration pilot program specially designed to benefit people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

For the first time in New Orleans, this type of program, which has been successfully implemented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will train NOMA staff to optimally serve those with memory support needs and their caregivers through exposure to positive art experiences.

Ten residents of Poydras Home, along with key Poydras Home staff and family caregivers, will experience NOMA’s collections with specially trained museum docents and staff for a series of 6 visits over a period of 3 months beginning June 1 and lasting through August 18, 2015, in the Artful Minds Pilot Program.

Arts & Minds is the consulting organization for Artful Minds at NOMA and will provide the training to museum docents and staff. Arts & Minds is a non-profit organization committed to improving quality of life for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia through meaningful art-centered activities that create positive cognitive experiences, enhance communication, and reduce isolation. Participants and their caregivers are empowered to strengthen social, emotional and spiritual bonds by engaging with art. This growing international movement of arts in health seeks to increase stimulation of cognitive function to support retained capabilities including visual and spatial perception, verbal and non-verbal expression, attention, humor, social connections and self-esteem.

At the point of completion, the pilot program will be evaluated by all partners with hopes of extending it to qualifying members of the public.

“We wanted to bring this program to New Orleans as part of fulfilling NOMA’s mission of providing innovative experiences for all of our audiences,” said Deputy Director for Interpretation and Audience Engagement, Allison Reid. “We are grateful to our partners at Poydras Home for piloting this program with us, so we can create a program that fosters communication and connections through visual art for those living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

“Poydras Home’s long history of mission-driven dedication to provide expert level memory support to all residents affected by Alzheimer’s and other dementias make us ideal candidates to populate this innovative pilot program with NOMA. We are proud participants in this art enrichment effort that can broaden the depth of positive life experience for our residents,” says Poydras Home CEO Jay Rive.

“Combining the concept of art and the mind is a pioneering initiative taking place in this part of the country, and is far-reaching in its implications because art is a commanding medium for stimulating connections and function within the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Nicholas Bazan, Professor and Director, Neuroscience Center of Excellence, LSU Health New Orleans. “This disease is one of our society’s foremost contemporary challenges, particularly in regards to the specifics of disease development, which still remain elusive. Art, in all its forms, is an important element for activating circuitry in the brain and ultimately can be a helpful instrument for restoring function and slowing down the progression of this disease.”

The inspiration for Artful Minds grew out of the childhood friendship of New Orleans natives Tripp Friedler and Sassy Kohlmeyer, both firsthand witnesses to the effects of Alzheimer’s and dementia in their own family members. Sassy Kohlmeyer, art educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collaborated with Carolyn Halpin-Healy, co-founder with Dr. James M. Nobel of Arts & Minds, to extend the expertise of this impactful program to her hometown with the help of Tripp Friedler. It is their hope that the program takes root at NOMA and will bring the joy of art to the visiting community of Poydras Home in this initial effort.

“Having lived with the devastating effects of dementia on both our parents and their caregivers we wanted to create a program that would help both parties,” explains Tripp Friedler. “Artful Minds is a small step in bettering the lives of participants and their caregivers. We believe in the power of art as a non-pharmacological intervention that includes cognitively and emotionally stimulating activities. Art programs such as this can forge positive emotional connections with art and one another.”

Artful Minds at NOMA is sponsored by Tripp Friedler, Boysie Bollinger, Hermie Kohlmeyer, Merritt Lane and other donors. More at http://poydrashome.com

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June 26th, join us for the opening of A Louisiana Parlor: Antebellum Taste and Context. Curator Mel Buchanan will lead us in a lecture along with Anne Butler, the owner of the Butler-Greenwood Plantation.

noma1“>NOMAlogo5-8 p.m.: Art on the Spot
5:30-8:30 p.m.: Music by Shotgun Jazz
6 p.m.: Lecture with Mel Buchanan and Anne Butler: “The History of Harriet Flower Mathews’ Greenwood Plantation Parlor and its Move to New Orleans”
After the lecture: Anne Butler will sign copies of her newest book Images of America: St. Francisville and West Feliciana Parish in the Museum Shop
About A Louisiana Parlor: Antebellum Taste and Context
In celebration of the acquisition of a superb Rococo Revival parlor from the Butler-Greenwood Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana, this exhibition will feature the parlor in its entirety and component parts, and illuminates its setting, and the taste for revival styles in furniture and the decorative arts prevalent in the mid-19th century South.

About Anne Butler
Author of several dozen books on Louisiana history and culture, crime, children’s books and cookbooks, Anne Butler has had hundreds of articles published in magazines and newspapers. She has a BA from Sweet Briar College, Virginia, and an MA from Humboldt State in California. A former editor of Country Roads Magazine, she has also worked as assistant editor for AAA publications and a California magazine on the Monterey Peninsula. A resident of St. Francisville since 1970, she operates a Bed & Breakfast at her historic family home, 1790s Butler Greenwood Plantation, where she also conducted house tours for 23 years. She is active in historic preservation and has recently helped compile a digital archive of some 1,000 19th and early 20th century images for the parish historical society. She also writes all of the promotional features for parish non-profit special events like the Audubon Pilgrimage.

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Learn more about free admission for teens and active duty military in the link below:

http://noma.org/emails/detail/124/

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Register your child for summer camp at NOMA or encourage your teen to be a summer camp counselor…

http://noma.org/emails/detail/124/

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NOMA

Friday Nights at NOMA

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noma-fridayFRIDAY NIGHTS AT NOMA: LECTURE WITH GREY GUNDAKER, POETRY SLAM, AND MORE
5-9 p.m. April 17, 2015

Tonight, Grey Gundaker gives a lecture in the Stern Auditorium: “Ancestors, Remembrance, and Moral Force: Flashes of Spirit in Burial and Residential Settings.” Enjoy live performances by N’Kafu Traditional African Dance Company, plus NOMA has free art activities, a cash bar, and of course, great art!

*5-8 p.m.: Art on the Spot
*5-6, 7-8 p.m.: Music by N’Kafu Traditional African Dance Company
*6 p.m.: Lecture by Grey Gundaker, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at William and Mary College
*6 p.m.: Youth Poetry Slam Open Mic
*7 p.m.: Poetry Slam hosted by Slam New Orleans

About N’Kafu Traditional African Dance Company
N’Kafu Traditional African Dance Company was founded by Mariama Curry out of the pure love and passion of African traditions. N’Kafu is dedicated to the research, historical documentation, preservation, presentation, and promotion of African folklore. Mariama has taught and performed in New Orleans area schools for over 20 years. Her company performs annually for events throughout the state.

About Slam New Orleans
Slam New Orleans is a spoken word grass root initiative whose goal is to promote spoken word and slam poetry competitions to all ages, genders and races. Founded in 2008 by a group of local poets that believed that this medium of expression could save lives, and wanted New Orleans to be represented nationally, because they were not since hurricane Katrina in 2005. Each year Slam New Orleans organizes a team of adult poets, named Team S.N.O. to go to regional and national poetry competitions to represent the New Orleans poetry scene. Since its inception, Team S.N.O. has won three national poetry slam titles, placed second at the Southern Fried Poetry Slam in 2010 and 2012, and third place at Southwest Shoot Out Poetry Slam and 3rd at the National Poetry Slam 2014.

About Grey Gundaker
Grey Gundaker is Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of American Studies and professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary. She began studying and writing about African American religious and philosophical knowledge that informs designed landscapes, burial and ancestral tributes, and the arts 25 years ago, while a graduate student at Yale, where she worked with the anthropologist John Szwed and art historian Robbert Farris Thompson. Her publications include numerous articles and the books Signs of Diaspora/Diaspora of Signs: Literacies, Creolization and Vernacular Practice in African America, Keep Your Head to the Sky: Interpreting African American Home Ground, and with co-author Judith McWillie, No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work.

Ancestors, Remembrance, and Moral Force: Flashes of Spirit in Burial and Residential Settings
In the African Diaspora legacies of Kongo join the traditions of other peoples and American Christianity in a rich repertoire of commemorative symbols and practices that show respect for those who have transitioned recently and in the more distant past. For many African peoples rights in land were demonstrated by material signs showing ancestral connections to the landscape. When groups migrated they planted these signs in new terrain. For African Americans enslaved in the United States, it remained essential to show respect for the dead, but it was especially important to transcend the rupture of the Middle Passage by asserting rights in a new and hostile surroundings. This talk follows a transatlantic thread which links flashing and white substances with transition across water and continuing spiritual presence in the world of the living, showing how these signs move back and forth between burial and home landscapes of commemoration.

America’s Secret Epidemic

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mislead2015apr23Thursday, April 23, 2015 – 6:30pm

Faubourg St. John neighbor Dr. Howard Mielke has worked hard for decades to investigate and study the effects of lead.   He has been a champion for children by pushing to have lead remediation performed in New Orleans’ playgrounds, parks and anywhere children play.

Lead is an insidious threat that you and anyone with children should learn more about.  Don’t brush this off as a non-issue.   It is truly important to your health and the health of children.

Dr. Howard Mielke has a treasure trove of scientific information about lead.   He can explain the scientific facts as simply as you like or get into the intricate details if you want to know more.   When it comes to facts about lead and why it should be removed from where children play, Dr. Howard Mielke is “the man”.

You have an opportunity to learn more and to meet with your neighbor Dr. Howard Mielke at the New Orleans Museum of Art Theater on April 23rd at 6:30 p.m.

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Thursday, April 23, 2015 – 6:30pm
New Orleans Museum of Art Theater, City Park

 

View the entire film on April 23rd at 6:30 p.m.
in the New Orleans Museum of Art Theater in New Orleans City Park.

Getting the Lead Out:
The Intersection of Lead, Crime, Health and Preservation 
This year’s Martha Robinson Lecture features clips from the documentary film MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic and a presentation by Faubourg St. John neighbor Dr. Howard Mielke, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology, Tulane University School of Medicine.
Dr. Howard Mielke
Dr. Howard Mielke

Whether in the paint of our old buildings or in the fuel that was used in our motor vehicles, we are affected daily by the legacy of millions of tons of lead in our environment. The film establishes the medical underpinning about health damage caused by children’s exposure to lead-based paint. In addition, the rise and fall of fuel lead additives are described for New Orleans. MisLEAD shows that legacy lead has an ongoing effect on New Orleans through its impact not just on physical health, but on societal health and behavior. Finally, the film depicts efforts to decrease legacy lead, and ensure the recovery and preservation of New Orleans communities for future generations.

This event will screen segments of the film and will include a panel discussion.

mislead2015apr23Thursday, April 23, 2015 – 6:30pm

This lecture is FREE and open to the public.

Location of event:

New Orleans Museum of Art Theater, City Park
New Orleans, LA 70119
Thursday, April 23, 2015 – 6:30pm
New Orleans Museum of Art Theater, City Park

mielke-on-lead23apr2015

Walk at NOMA Every Saturday

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Soul+Steppers+Flyer

The Ruth U. Fertel Tulane Community Health Center invites you to join our Soul Steppers Walking Club!

Our walking group is already strong in numbers, all that is missing is you! Bring friends, family, and pets…and let’s get moving!

Every Saturday @ 9am

Rain or shine – we’ll be there!

Location: Meet at City Park on the steps of the NOLA Art Museum
(Where Esplanade and Carrollton hit City Park)

Every Soul Stepper receives a T-shirt, pedometer and other tools to inspire walking!

QUESTIONS? Contact Sarah or Steven at 504-988-0389 or E-mail: tuchc@tulane.edu

Steven Jones
Program Coordinator
Ruth U. Fertel Tulane Community Health Center
Brinton Family Health & Healing Center
711 N. Broad Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Office: 504-988-0389
Cell: 504-756-4380
LoseDat

Summer Art Camp at NOMA

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NOMA-art-camp

Summer Art Camp at NOMA

Explore NOMA’s permanent collection and special exhibitions! Professional teaching artists in a variety of disciplines encourage creativity and imagination as campers create projects in an array of different media.

To register for camp, contact Elise Solomon at education@noma.org or 504-658-4128.

REGISTRATION FEES

Per each Monday-Friday session. Materials are included.

Before May 17

Full day:               | ½ day:
Members/$240          | Members/$120
Nonmembers/$300          | Nonmembers/$150

After May 17

Full day:              | ½ day:
Members/$260          | Members/$140
Nonmembers/$320          | Nonmembers/$170

Payment is due the Monday before camp begins.

CAMP INFORMATION

IN THE STUDIO: 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
ON THE STAGE: 1:00 – 4:00 pm

Please note campers registered for the full-day must bring a sack lunch.
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Ages 5-8

June 3-7
◾IN THE STUDIO: See the Future
Discover innovations presented at the World’s Fairs of the past century then create drawings, paintings and sculpture that envision life in the future.
◾ON THE STAGE: What’s the Story?
Learn the fundamentals of telling a good story! Explore museum galleries and the sculpture garden to discover heroes for your stories then learn how to “spin a good yarn” using character development and story progression.

June 17-21
◾IN THE STUDIO: Prints Galore
Explore the art of printmaking! Monoprints, screen prints and spontaneous printing with everyday objects will be explored in this celebration of the multiple.
◾ON THE STAGE: You Make the Rules!
Take your imagination as far as it can go during the Improvisation Camp! Build a universe and make it dance! Improvise like you’re a wizard.

July 8-12
◾IN THE STUDIO: Trash to Treasure
Learn creative ways to recycle by making fun functional objects and art from found objects and cast offs.
◾ON THE STAGE: Make a Scene!
Visit NOMA’s galleries to discover people and stories in the works of art, then develop characters and short scenes based on what you have seen.

July 22-26
◾IN THE STUDIO: Pack Your Suitcase
Embark on a global adventure! Chart your course on a map and design your own passport to track your travels as you travel the world in NOMA’s galleries.
◾ON THE STAGE: Puppets
Explore different styles of puppetry from around the world and then build puppets inspired by works of art in NOMA’s collection.

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Ages 9-12

June 10-14
◾IN THE STUDIO: Magic Machines
What kind of machine would you like to invent? Transform found objects into a sculpture of an imaginary machine and create a poster to advertise your invention.
◾ON THE STAGE: The Art of Storytelling
Master the art of storytelling as campers write and recount their own tales based on works of art in NOMA’s collection.

June 24-28
◾IN THE STUDIO: Inspired by Nature
Discover how artists have represented nature throughout time in this printmaking camp that explores multiple ways to create prints.
◾ON THE STAGE: Assemble Your Team
Build a scene, a city, an entire world with your scene mates. Learn agreement and trust as you work with your partners to take whatever is thrown at you and turn it into a peg-legged sailor on a high-wire. Comedy is our ship, teamwork is our fuel.

July 15-19
◾IN THE STUDIO: Recycled Couture
Get ready for the runway by creating your own wearable works of eco-ware, art and fashion.
◾ON THE STAGE: Play Practice
Interpret museum works in a one act play created and produced by NOMA campers!

July 29-August 2
◾IN THE STUDIO: Around the World
Go on a weeklong adventure around the world without leaving NOMA! Create paintings, prints and mixed media works of art about the unique places you discover.
◾ON THE STAGE: Puppets
Design puppets and set the stage for a puppet show. Puppet traditions from around the world will be taught as students get into the act.

Pfister Sisters Friday

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Friday Night at NOMA! Pfister Sisters, Food Demo & Film Screenings

Visit the New Orleans Museum of Art on Friday Night for music by the Pfister Sisters, a cooking demo in Cafe NOMA and two great film screenings. There will also be family art making activity and three floors of great art – including the new “Ralston Crawford and Jazz” exhibition.