New Orleans African American Museum of Art

To begin this post, I want to say that neither of us are to knowledgeable about art, so in order to educate ourselves we decided to go to the New Orleans African American Museum of Art. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. I guess that I was expecting more in the way of traditional, more straight-forward art, but we were treated to a lot of nice contemporary stuff. A lot of it I got, and a lot of it I didn’t, but it was a good experience either way.

There were also a lot of African things there, mostly taken from the Congo. The were a lot of masks, and statues, but also some large pieces of metal that I mistook for swords at first. Turns out that they were a type of currency used for trading. They had been forged from iron and, from what I could gather, were shaped that way as a sort of extravagance. I wish I had a picture of it, but that’ll come later.

The museum itself is in the Treme Villa, an old creole villa with three buildings and some beautiful old New Orleans courtyards. Unfortunately, some of the exhibits were closed in order to prepare for a Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration, but it was still not something to be missed. If you’re ever in New Orleans be sure to go. All the info you’ll need to know is here.