Art and nature in harmony
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Admission is free. Donations are appreciated.
Open seven days a week
Summer Hours (April–September) 10 am–6 pm | Winter Hours (October–March) 10 am–5 pm
Wheelchairs may be used throughout our barrier-free property and are available upon request.
Image: Elyn Zimmerman’s Mississippi Meanders bridge is illuminated at dusk.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden occupies approximately eleven acres in City Park adjacent to the museum. Atypical of most sculpture gardens, this garden is located within a mature existing landscape of pines, magnolias, and live oaks surrounding two lagoons. The garden design creates outdoor viewing spaces within this picturesque landscape. Originally conceived in 2003, the Sculpture Garden doubled in size in 2019 and has grown to include more than 90 sculptures. READ MORE
Sydney and Walda Besthoff are the namesake visionary founders behind a world-renowned sculpture garden for New Orleans.
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Architects, landscape architects, lighting designers, and arborists were among the contractors who made it all possible.
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See highlights of the Sculpture Garden in a virtual tour produced in partnership with the Google Arts & Culture Initiative.
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You can play a role in the historic expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden by making a gift to support the project.
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Relive the excitement of the grand opening of the Besthoff Sculpture Garden expansion in May 2019.
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Bronze
Pablo Casals’s Obelisk, a towering accumulation of welded bronze cellos, dominates the waters of a lagoon in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Standing over twenty feet tall, the Obelisk, built in homage to the world-renowned Spanish-Puerto Rican cellist and human rights activist Pablo Casals, is an imposing example of monumental sculpture by French-born artist Arman.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art offers detailed entries on 64 artworks in the original 2003 garden, as well as a bibliography and overview of the garden’s founding. 192 pages, hardcover. Edited by Miranda Lash. $49.95
Have you seen the newest addition to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden? 🔍
Thomas J Price’s sculpture, titled “Time Unfolding,” is a nine-foot-tall statue of a woman looking down at her cell phone, seemingly paused in contemplation. The work is part of a series depicting everyday fictional subjects at a monumental scale—combining traditional sculpting and digital technology to question how society projects ideas and expectations through public space.
To create “Time Unfolding” and similar works, the artist combined observations from different subjects, incorporating 3D scanning imagery from an open call in Los Angeles. Since each work does not necessarily represent just one person, Price’s works push back against histories of racial profiling and the modern use of biometric tools to monitor individuals’ actions.
Price often riffs on the tradition of canonical Western sculpture—as seen in the subtle classical contrapposto pose of the figure in “Time Unfolding” and in the artist’s decision to never cast figures at a one-to-one scale, prompting viewers to think about who should exist in monumental form.
The new installation is the first of three additions to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in 2024. The sculpture garden is free and open to the public, seven days a week.
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🎨: Thomas J Price, “Time Unfolding,” 2023. Bronze. Museum Purchase with Gifted Funds from the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Foundation, E-2024-9.1. © Thomas J Price.
📍: Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
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In her time, Mary Cassatt’s pictures of ruddy baby skin and floral house gowns were revolutionary.
In the pastel colors, soft brushwork, and spontaneity of the late 19th-century French Impressionists, American artist Cassatt captured a woman’s affectionate embrace and tender gaze in her 1906 “Mother and Child in the Conservatory.”
The artist was not only one of the few Americans—and the only woman—to become allied with the radical Impressionist art movement in Paris, but her intimate paintings elevated and boldly made public the domestic, everyday life of women.
Throughout her life as an artist working in France, Mary Cassatt fiercely advocated for women’s rights, including the right to vote.
In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Cassatt said to her close friend, the powerhouse suffragist Louisine Havemeyer, “If the world is to be saved, it will be the women who save it.”
Happy Mother’s Day from NOMA. 💐
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🎨: Mary Cassatt, “Mother and Child in the Conservatory,” 1906. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase with funds contributed by Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Forgotston, 82.124.
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Why should you come to Teen Night at the museum? 🏛️🎨✨
NOMA’s Teen Art Council has you covered: @djariespins, free tacos from @lacocinita, gallery talks, art-making, a photo booth, and more! Explore “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” and connect with creative teens from across the city.
Admission and programming are free for teens to this program designed by TAC—by teens, for teens. Advanced registration is encouraged at the link in our bio.
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Where does discarded technology go when it leaves your desk? 🖥️➿🗑️
In works like "Tightrope: Behind the Processor #2," Elias Sime repurposes electronic waste shipped from Western countries and gathered in Addis Ababa’s Merkato (open-air market) to consider its global impact in an accelerated consumer culture.
The artist has said that the work`s title “refers to the precarious balance a city must maintain to survive and thrive,” and many of his works look like bird’s-eye views of massive, sprawling cities or compositions that suggest topography. Such aerial positionality allows viewers to zoom out from the minutiae of the materials themselves to see something more.
Sime repurposes woven electrical wire and circuit boards to weave a narrative of everyday objects that speak louder than words about, as Sime puts it, the “troubled relationship between countries that create tremendous e-waste and those that process it.” Looking past the emotional weighting of new versus old, he instead emphasizes the way that objects and ideas can connect in new ways.
👉 "Tightrope" is on view in "Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA," a presentation of works from the museum`s permanent collection by some of the continent`s most pioneering artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Click the link in our bio to learn more about the exhibition.
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🎨: Elias Sime, "Tightrope: Behind the Processor #2," 2022. Wall piece made from woven electrical wires, circuit boards, and other components on panel. Incoming Museum Purchase, E-2023-6.
📍: Second floor, The Helis Foundation Gallery
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On view at NOMA through July 14, “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” brings together nearly 100 sculpture, paintings, collages, drawings, and films to present the breadth of the Kenyan-American artist’s multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1990s to today.
The exhibition traces connections between recent developments in Mutu’s sculptures and her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, and African and diasporic cultural traditions.
🔗 Click the link our bio to learn more about the exhibition.
The presentation in New Orleans is sponsored by the @fordfoundation. Additional support is provided by @notcfund @delta, @gladstone.gallery, Walda Besthoff, @victoriamirogallery, @thewindsorcourt, The Azby Fund, Keith Fox and Tom Keyes, Aimée Farnet Siegel and Mike Siegel, Robin Rankin, Elizabeth Boh, Pat Mitchell and Scott Seydel, Harvey and Marie Orth, and Jeff Childers and Onay Gutierrez.
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A reminder from Elenore Falshaw, NOMA’s Chief Advancement Officer, that today, Tuesday, May 7, is GiveNOLA Day! ⚜️
Thank you for considering a donation of just $10 or more to the New Orleans Museum of Art to support our world-class exhibitions, innovative programs, and dynamic educational offerings that foster lifelong learning through the arts.
🔗 Click the link in our bio to make your gift at givenola.org/noma.
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We’re making continual changes to bring all of our engaging digital offerings to the forefront of our website. We invite you to keep coming back for new content and exciting updates!
Discover artworks, collections, and stories in a digital format from NOMA like never before.
