I wanna see you shake your hips and learn.

I spend a lot of time writing about art, dance, culture, etc. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like my pop culture. I’m particularly in love with pop music. You know, those happy, catchy songs that you listen to over and over again until you can’t stand ‘em any longer.

And in the pop music firmament, is there any thing better than Euro pop? Think ABBA or AQUA. You know what I’m talking about. So imagine my delight when I recently tuned into Graham Norton and discovered a new Euro-Pop jewel. The show was a little weird thanks to guest stars Brendan Fraser and Martina Navratilova. But the musical guest and her dancers rocked my Euro pop world.

Earworm alert: Listen to this song more than two or three times and you can’t get it out of your head.

Here is Alesha Dixon’s The Boy Does Nothing.

Liberty Park will never be the same.

Today, unexpectedly, my dog’s life ended. For more than 13 years, Cairo was my best canine friend, my goofball companion, and possibly the happiest creature I’ve ever known. I really, really miss him.

Thanks Cairo, for being so tolerant of someone who'd never had a dog before and didn't really know what I was doing. And thanks for all those walks at Liberty Park.

I’ll have a gin and tonic with a twist of art.

I’ve already mentioned that in New Orleans you can get a cocktail anywhere and take it anywhere. Never was this principle more obvious than at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The first thing I encountered entering the museum was a table selling drink tickets. For just three dollars you can get the cocktail of your choice and wander the museum with a drink in hand.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the cocktail table (complete with a napping bartender) in front of Slater Bradley’s brilliant 2005 Unchartered Settlements, a c-print mounted on aluminum. Cheers!

Pictures of pictures that are picture perfect.

Museums love to brag about their special collections. Maybe it’s old masters. Maybe they have a particularly good collection of Impressionists. Or they’ve specialized in minimalism, or romanticism, or the Renaissance. They may even build special rooms for their paintings of water lilies. But few museums brag about their photography collections. In fact, I’ve never been to a museum that so quietly and confidently bragged about it’s collection of photography like the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

Don’t get me wrong, if you went to the museum’s Web site you’d be sure that they brag about only two things: their sculpture collection and their Faberge collection. (OK, I’m about to write the longest parenthetical statement ever. I admit I just recently saw an amazing Faberge exhibit in San Francisco. So my critique may be a little too harsh. But the NOMA Faberge collection is boring and displayed horribly. Really you shouldn’t brag about this. Particularly when the rest of the museum is so good.) But when you walk into NOMA, you realize that this is a museum that values photography like few others.

When you enter the doors of NOMA, you find yoursef in a beautiful grand hall, the walls of which lined with one of the best contemporary photography collections I’ve ever seen. This museum puts it’s amazing photography collection first. And these are huge, lush prints that capture your attention immediately. They’re also signature works by some of the world's greatest contemporary photographers.
Here are some pictures of some of my favorite pictures from the New Orleans Museum of Art:

Unite Lola, a 2008 Giclee print on paper from Dan Tague. It’s strange how attractive money is when it’s big.

I’m in love with Nic Nicosia’s Untitled (Sam) from 1986, a silver dye bleach photograph. It’s dramatic and playful, sinister and funny, all at the same time.

Then there’s Ysumasa Morimura’s Daughter of Art History, Princess B. If this looks surprisingly painterly, it because it’s a color photograph that is treated with a transparent medium which adds a feel of brush strokes.
Cindy Sherman never ceases to amaze me. Her early works, the film stills, are brilliant. But this photo may be even better. As always, it’s a self portrait—only Cindy never looks like herself. This huge photograph is historical and current all at the same time. Don’t look too closely, because as usual, Cindy’s innocent photographs are just a little disturbing. This photo is a dye coupler print from 1990 called Untitled (MP 225).


Here’s a backyard barbecue I’d like to attend. It’s Tina Barney's 1989 chromogenic color print titled Tim, Phil, and I. Don’t you just love summer?


P.S. A temporary exhibit at NOMA called The Art of Caring (no photographs allowed, damn it), was a photographic tour de force, with hundred of photographs by some of the best photographers ever. But that's a story for another post.

From the bent end of Bourbon Street.

What do you get when the gayborhood meets the French-Quarter? A fleur-de-lis mirror ball of course.

Travel to the farthest reaches of Bourbon Street, where the gay bars bloom and the rainbow reigns supreme and you’ll find this festive balcony with the classic French-Quarter icon resplendently rendered in mirror. Color me gay.

Art Lobster: Creole edition.

You can’t travel to New Orleans and not expect to find some tasty shellfish. The New Orleans Museum of Art didn’t disappoint. Continuing a long tradition of lobsters in art, here’s Still Life of Fruit with Lobster and Dead Game, an oil on canvas painted by Dutch artist Michel Simons some time in the early part of the 17th Century. Delicious!

It’s a great museum, if you can figure out how to get there.

I’m a big fan of experiencing a new city through its public transportation system and its museums. It’s always an adventure to take a train, a bus, or a subway to a local museum. Both give you a great perspective on a new city.

But New Orleans put my dedication to public transportation to the test. I asked at the front desk of my hotel for transportation directions to the museum. Even with computer support, the desk clerk couldn’t give me the directions. Instead he suggested I go to Canal Street, look for people who looked like they were waiting for the bus, and ask them for directions. Long story short, it took about an hour just to figure out which bus I should ride. And after about an hour waiting for a return bus, I finally called a cab.

But all the trouble was worth the trip. The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) in City Park is a surprising museum with some great collections. The museum is known for its sculpture garden (which was closed by the time I got there). Although it’s obvious the museum is dedicated to sculpture as there were plenty of intriguing sculptural works surrounding and inside the museum. Here are a few examples.

Visitors to the museum are greeted by Wave, a 1988 breeze-powered, magical sculpture created by Lin Emery.

James Drake’s welded steel Winged Figure (1989) felt like something from Terry Gilliam’s brilliant movie, Brazil. I like the movie and I like this sculpture.

When you’re in the swamps of Louisiana, shouldn’t you find alligators climbing ladders on the walls of museums? Artist Elizabeth Shannon seems to think so with her 1989 work Camille II crafted from bronze and cypress wood.

I also liked Ernest Trova's Falling Man A.W.F. #01461 created in 1970 and crafted from nickel-plated bronze.

Stay tuned for a few more posts from NOMA.