Eight local artists will participate in the museum’s Creative Assembly residency and develop collaborations with NOMA’s collection, exhibitions, programs, and staff, the museum announced. The museum will introduce the Creative Assembly Cohort at NOMA at Night on Friday, Nov. 3.
The residency invites artists of all disciplines for a yearlong collaboration with the museum’s permanent collection, special exhibitions, and programs, the announcement said.
“While the museum’s scope is global, NOMA’s Creative Assembly Cohort underscores the importance of supporting local artists who continue New Orleans’s legacy as one of the most culturally rich cities in the world,” said Susan M. Taylor, the Montine McDaniel Freeman director of NOMA.
Members of the 2023-24 Creative Assembly Cohort are multidisciplinary artist and songwriter Charm Taylor, novelist, poet, and translator Daniel Fitzpatrick, cultural activist and Black Masking Indian Dianne Honoré, photographer Jourdan Barnes, rapper and lyricist Kr3wcial, dance choreographer Lauren Messina, painter Paige DeVries and performer and writer Simone Immanuel.
The artists for the Creative Assembly Cohort were selected from a pool of applicants with the goal of amplifying a diversity of art forms and highlighting artists’ individual definitions of community.
“This year, the Creative Assembly Cohort is taking inspiration from New Orleans’s neighborhoods, which are vital clusters of creativity, community and tradition in our city,” said Kelci Baker, community engagement manager at NOMA.
This year’s residency program kicked off in September with a series of professional development workshops, including meeting NOMA staff, considerations of trauma-informed practices, and introductions to important legal concepts in the art world.
Over the next year, the Creative Assembly Cohort will develop on-site and off-site public offerings that connect different neighborhoods across the city, museum officials said.
Projects from artists in the previous Creative Assembly Cohort included the debut of a composition by trumpeter Steve Lands exploring cosmology around the world, an original performance by pop art band People Museum underneath Louise Bourgeois’s iconic Spider in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, in-gallery activations by musician Joseph Darensbourg responding to special exhibitions on view at the museum, and a demonstration by food justice activist Courtney Clark looking at healthier alternatives to classic New Orleans cuisine.