Ogden Museum of Southern Art receives major donation from founder Roger Ogden

Applauds echoed and Champagne glasses rose in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art on Wednesday, as art lover and philanthropist Roger Houston Ogden announced that he would make a donation worth an estimated $20 million to the eponymously named museum that he was instrumental in founding.

Ogden, 77,  is one of New Orleans’ biggest real estate developers, with a hand in landmark commercial projects including the Omni Riverfront Hotel, Wyndham hotel, the Loews hotel and the management of the Shops at Canal Place.

He has also helped lead the development of public projects, including the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, Woldenberg Park, the repurposing of the Wildlife and Fisheries Building into the state Supreme Court building, and, of course, the Ogden Museum.

The “O,” as the Camp Street museum is sometimes known, opened to the public in 2003, becoming a cornerstone of the city’s arts and history attractions.

To celebrate the museum’s 20th year, Ogden promised to bequeath a portfolio of 12 shopping centers located across Louisiana and Mississippi that he developed early in his career to the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which will manage the real estate and contribute profits exclusively to the Ogden Museum. If all goes as planned, the property will generate $1 million per year, half of which will go to the museum, the other half will be reinvested into an ongoing fund.

The transfer of the property, which represents the single biggest donation in the Ogden Museum's history. will take place upon Ogden’s death. 

Ogden jokingly said the he was thrilled to announce the future gift, though he would probably be less thrilled when it eventually came to pass.  "But maybe we can have the funeral here," he said, to the laughter of the crowd. 

Hand-in-hand with his business successes, Ogden became an avid collector of art, particularly the sometimes-neglected work of Southern artists. By the early 1990s, he had accumulated almost 1,500 paintings and sculptures by more than 500 Southern artists. Eventually, he decided that his collection deserved a public venue.

"I kept hearing from curators, art historians, museum directors that what we had assembled was the finest collection anywhere of the visual art of the American South,” he said in a 2003 interview with The Times-Picayune. "Then I felt the mantle of responsibility."

Ogden considered several options for placing his collection of both historic and modern art, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Tulane University, LSU, and even the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art.

In the end, he partnered with Gregory O’Brien, then-chancellor of the University of New Orleans and others, to build a new museum in the city’s burgeoning museum district. 

Ogden donated approximately $25 million in artworks to form the core of the future museum’s collection.

The museum was meant to open in two stages. The modern wing, called Goldring Hall, opened in 2003. The second stage, an historic wing, was supposed to open a year later in the 19th-century Patrick F. Taylor Library, which is connected to the Goldring Hall by a short underground tunnel.

Almost 20 years later, the historic part of the “O” remains a handsome though spare event space, not the beautifully designed museum galleries originally envisioned. 

Ogden said he hopes his gift will allow the museum to achieve his original vision.