AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2024
New Orleans Museum of Art Day at Kolaj Fest New Orleans
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Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 12-16 June 2024. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
On Thursday, 13 June, Kolaj Fest New Orleans will head to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park for a day of activities. The centerpoint to the day is “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined”, a remarkable exhibition of one of the world’s preeminent collage artists. The exhibition takes viewers on a journey through the Nairobi-born artist’s early collage work and demonstrates how she makes fantastical forms that fuse folklore and history to speak to gender, race, colonization, the environment, and personal identity.
The day kicks off with a Daily Collage Congress where Kolaj Institute’s Ric Kasini Kadour will officially open the festival. Jennella Young, LaVonna Varnado-Brown, and Aisha Shillingford will introduce the Wangechi Mutu exhibition and lead a collage-centric tour. After lunch, Phil Irish, Naomi White, and Madera Rogers-Henry will hold a panel discussion on environmentalism in art.
Paloma Trecka and Todd Bartel will speak about the intersection of collage and jazz in light of the upcoming collage exhibition, “BOP!”. In its third iteration, “BOP!” will take place in May 2025 at the Beverly Arts Center on the South Side of Chicago. The exhibition is co-curated by Trecka and Bartel will preview some of the work planned. Trecka will speak about the first two iterations of “BOP!”, as well as read from her ongoing work in progress, a motion-inspired, rhythmic collage art manifesto. Bartel will discuss connections between Jazz improvisation and collage; “when gluing becomes fluid, playful, structured, chaotic, repetitive and sampled.”
Artist and filmmaker Mara Ahmed will screen the short, experimental film, Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation. It pushes the documentary medium in unexpected ways by opening with three contemporary South Asian-American women who recreate British colonial postcards from the early 20th century.
The Mystic Krewe of Scissors & Glue, New Orleans’ collage community, will host collage making during the programs. The museum and sculpture garden will be open to all registered Kolaj Fest New Orleans participants and anyone visiting the museum that day will be invited to attend Kolaj Fest New Orleans panels, lectures, and screening.
“Kolaj Institute is excited to partner with the New Orleans Museum of Art this year,” said Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour. “The Wangechi Mutu exhibition is a smart celebration of an important contemporary collage artist. We look forward to putting the international collage community in conversation with New Orleans artists around issues of the environment, race & identity, colonization, and the role art plays in our civic discourse. It should be an exciting day.”
On Wednesday, 12 June, 6-8PM, NOMA presents “Assemblage in New Orleans“, a panel discussion moderated by artist and scholar, Kristina Kay Robinson.
ABOUT KOLAJ
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium that celebrates contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society. The festival is presented by Kolaj Institute, a 501c3 Louisiana-based, non-profit organization whose mission is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, & disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement and Kolaj Magazine, a quarterly, printed, art magazine reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. The event brings together collage artists and art professionals to elevate the status of collage through panel discussions, exhibitions, and activities. Attendees will meet, network, and share community, camaraderie, and fellowship. We will leave the event with new ideas for artmaking, writing, and curatorial projects, and will be inspired to champion collage in the year to come.
ABOUT NOMA AND THE BESTHOFF SCULPTURE GARDEN
The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) and its Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden are home to innovative exhibitions, installations, educational programs, and research. Exploring human creativity across time, cultures, and disciplines, the global scope of the museum’s initiatives open a vibrant dialogue with the history and culture of New Orleans. The museum stewards a collection of nearly 50,000 works, with exceptional holdings in African art, photography, decorative arts, and Japanese art, as well as strengths in American and French art, and an expanding collection highlighting contemporary artists. The museum’s exhibitions and dynamic learning and engagement offerings serve as a forum for visitors to engage with diverse perspectives, share cultural experiences, and foster a life of learning at all ages.
NOMA’s 12-acre Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden expands visitors’ experiences of the museum with one of the most notable sculpture gardens in the country. The Besthoff Sculpture Garden, free and open to the public seven days a week, has nearly 100 sculptures and outdoor works of art situated in a unique landscape featuring Spanish moss-laden live oaks and a sinuous lagoon surrounded by an expansive ecosystem of native plants. The works in the garden range from the 19th to the 21st centuries, with pieces by Auguste Rodin, Louise Bourgeois, Ida Kohlmeyer, Claes Oldenburg, Larry Bell, Sean Scully, Fred Wilson, Maya Lin, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Teresita Fernández, Ugo Rondinone, Hank Willis Thomas, and many others. The Besthoff Sculpture Garden features contemporary design elements—including a sculpture pavilion, an amphitheater, and an architecturally significant canal link bridge connecting the garden’s original 2003 footprint with a 2019 expansion. Its water management practices support the health and resiliency of New Orleans City Park and the surrounding environment. Throughout the year, NOMA hosts outdoor programs in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden including festivals, performances, wellness classes, tours, and more.
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 12-16 June 2024. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.