Jazz Scene Photographer Herman Leonard Dies at 87 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP).- Jazz scene photographer Herman Leonard, famous for his smoky, backlighted black-and-white photos of such greats as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra, has died. He was 87. Leonard, who moved to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina flooded his New Orleans home and destroyed thousands of his prints, died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, family spokeswoman Geraldine Baum said on his website. The cause of death wasn’t disclosed. Leonard was considered [...]

Studio Museum in Harlem Summer Exhibition Features Zwelethu Mthethwa

HARLEM, NY.- The first New York museum exhibition of South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa (b. 1960, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) brings together three compelling series: “Interiors” and “Empty Beds” document the domestic lives of migrant workers in and near Johannesburg, South Africa, while photographs in “Common Ground” focus on shared experiences of natural disaster in urban areas, featuring houses in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana and on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, after wildfires. Though his photographs are [...]

Destroy this Memory: Photographs by Richard Misrach

NEW YORK, NY.- The photographs in Richard Misrach’s Destroy This Memory (Aperture, August, 2010) are an affecting reminder of the physical and psychological impact of Hurricane Katrina as told by those on the ground, and seen through the lens of a contemporary master. Rather than simply surveying the damage, Misrach—who has photographed the region regularly since the 1970s, most notably for his ongoing Cancer Alley project—found himself drawn to the hurricane-inspired graffiti: messages scrawled in spray paint, crayons, chalk, or [...]

New Orleans Remembers Katrina and the Current Oil Spill with Exhibition

NEW ORLEANS, LA.- Tekrema Center for the Arts and Culture, which will be a place of meditation and reflection from June 3 to August 31. The space of contemplation and relaxation, free and open to the public, centers around Healing Waters an installation created by artist Niko Ciglio. The exhibition features different waters of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and offers the community a place to commemorate the memories and lessons of Hurricane Katrina and to formulate community action [...]

New Orleans Bounce and Hip-Hop in Words and Pictures at Ogden Museum of Southern Art

NEW ORLEANS, LA.- The Ogden Museum of Southern Art/University of New Orleans presents Where They At: New Orleans Bounce and Hip-Hop in Words and Pictures. This exhibition celebrates the founders, architects, and players in New Orleans hip-hop and the uniquely regional rap known as bounce music, a phenomenon that evolved from the city’s housing projects. Photographs, oral histories, and video footage compiled by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock document the passing of seminal beats from New Orleans music [...]

Prospect.1 New Orleans Shows Public Art as a Form of Civic Engagement

NEW ORLEANS, LA.- The historic Holy Cross community of New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward can add to its ranks another completed home. Miss Sarah’s House, which was rebuilt thanks to artist Wangechi Mutu’s efforts as part of the biennial of international art Prospect.1, was dedicated in presence of the artist, Ms. Sarah Lastie, Dan Cameron of Prospect New Orleans, and Tye Waller of the New Orleans Women Artists Collective (NOWAC), which was instrumental in the project. A spoken word performance [...]

Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell Subject of Three-Part Exhibition

NEW ORLEANS, LA.- The Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University presents Joan Mitchell in New Orleans, on view March 31 – June 30, 2010. Organized in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation and Cheim & Read Gallery, New York, the three-part exhibition brings together the major bodies of the artist’s work: works on paper at the Newcomb Art Gallery, paintings at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and prints at the Contemporary Arts Center. The Newcomb Art Gallery show is [...]