SPARED FROM THE STORM: Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art

Arguably the most important art museum in the American South, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) gathered nearly 90 of its finest works of European and American art from a 300-year period — works that survived Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating natural disasters in U.S. history — for the rare exhibition Spared from the Storm. Joslyn Art Museum hosted the premiere of this show at a museum.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with unprecedented fury, forever altering the lives of its citizens. NOMA is located between the badly flooded Mid-City and Lakeview areas. Eight-foot-deep flood waters encroached from all sides, but the building's integrity, its placement on a high ridge, and the work of dedicated employees who moved artworks to safety ensured that the collection of 40,000 artworks survived unharmed, but the building and adjacent sculpture garden sustained multimillion-dollar damage. The catastrophe forced NOMA to lay off most of its 86 employees and close its doors for six months. Even today, it has not returned to full operation.

Some of NOMA's most prized works from the 17th through mid 20th century comprised Spared from the Storm. Among them were paintings and sculpture by François Boucher, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, and Giambattista Tiepolo. Of particular note were paintings, drawings, pastels, and sculpture by Edgar Degas, who spent time in New Orleans visiting family, and a 10-foot-tall portrait of Marie Antoinette by the greatest woman artist of the 18th century, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.

An exhibition-related book, highlighting many of the works in the show, sold for $44.95 in Joslyn's museum shop, which operated an auxiliary location — The French Quarter — at the end of the exhibition galleries.

Exhibition Sponsorship

This exhibition was organized by Joslyn Art Museum in partnership with the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Major sponsors of this exhibition were The Drew Foundation (Jack, Helen, Louis, and Jean), First National Bank, and Mutual of Omaha. Sponsors are Omaha Steaks, Gail W. and Michael B. Yanney, Lincoln Financial Group, Lenore Polack, Philip J. Willson, Millard Foundation, SilverStone Group, the Omaha World-Herald, Emspace Group, and FIREBIRDS.

To aid this sister institution during its continued renovation and repair, a portion of the proceeds of the exhibition at Joslyn benefited the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Companion Exhibition

Through September 16, 2007, an exhibition of photographs by Stan Strembicki was on view in the Print Gallery. Selections from his Lost Library portfolio, featuring photographs taken in post-Katrina New Orleans and recently acquired by Joslyn Art Museum, was a companion show to Spared from the Storm.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842), Portrait of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (detail), ca. 1788, oil on canvas, Museum purchase, Women's Volunteer Committee and Carrie Heiderich Funds, Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887-1986), My Back Yard (detail), 1937, oil on canvas, Museum purhcase, City of New Orleans Capital Fund, Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art

Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Portrait of Estelle Musson De Gas (the artist's sister-in-law) (detail), 1872, oil on canvas, Museum purchase by Public Subscription, Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art