Perspectives: JAMNOLA
Eighteen New Orleans artists craft a Crescent-City-themed experiential museum in the Marigny
Feathers. Feathers everywhere. As though a parakeet and a peacock threw a party––Mardi Gras-themed, of course, 79rs Gang playing somewhere in the background––feather chandeliers, a feather fireplace, a giant gilded bird cage, all crafted and curated by New Orleans costume designer and “rainbow lady” Julianne Lagniappe. It all leads gently to a video immersion tribute to Royce Osborne, featuring dazzling clips from his 2003 documentary All On a Mardi Gras Day––which honors the the culture of Black Carnival in New Orleans.
This is only the first leg of the journey that is JAMNOLA, New Orleans’ very first experiential pop-up museum, which co-founder Jonny Liss describes as “5,400 square feet of pure NOLA joy”. Standing for “Joy Art Music New Orleans,” the collaborative project will take locals and visitors alike through twelve rooms—or rather worlds—of concentrated New Orleans brilliance. After walking through Lagniappe’s “Feather Forest,” guests will wander on through muraled celebrations of second lines and poboys; a Bling Bayou featuring thousands and thousands of recycled Mardi Gras beads, doubloons, and CDs; a larger than life Spirit Tree; a room imagining what might happen if giant crawfish decided to season us for their Saturday afternoon boil; a virtual costume closet; an umbrella room, a sound garden; and an ode to local legends ranging from Louis Armstrong to Lil Wayne.
“It all started with happiness,” said Liss, a Los Angeles native who fell in love with the Crescent City at Jazz Fest 1992. He’s long been on a mission to foster joy through music and art, “and always knew the only place was New Orleans.”
Liss and his partner in business and life, Chad Smith, knew that to achieve what they envisioned, they would need to partner with people deeply rooted in South Louisiana culture. “That’s where Collin Ferguson and Catherine Todd came in,” he said. The founders of Where Y’Art, a New Orleans collective representing more than 150 local artists, Ferguson and Todd helped Liss and Smith to develop the concepts for each room in JAMNOLA, fine-tuning the most important cultural experiences to play on. Then, pulling from their network of hundreds of local artists, they brought each room to life with help from a collaboration of eighteen painters, musicians, craftsmen, and curators including: Lagniappe, Erika Goldring, Ceaux, Noah Church, Josh Hailey, Jeremy Paten, Jon Sherman, Pompadour Productions, the Milagros Collective, Robin Durand, Shel Roumillat, Kari Shisler, Henry York, Marcus Brown, Khari Allen Lee, Skye Erie, Jacob Reptile, and Charles Hoffacker.
“Every single artist that we went with took our ideas so far above and beyond what we could have imagined,” said Liss.
Modeled after immersive happy houses such as The Museum of Ice Cream, Color Factory, or George R.R. Martin’s fantasy-land “House of No Return” that is Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, JAMNOLA infuses the whimsy of enclosed imagination with a sense of profound place. Each world within is magical for the beauty and the reverie crafted by its artists, but also for its quintessential New Orleans-ness. “We wanted people to come and to see our gems, and then to go out and find them for themselves,” said Liss. “Oh, this beaded, upside down bayou—remarkable! But now, show me a real bayou.”
In hopes of fostering a true New Orleans experience that goes beyond the walls of JAMNOLA, one aspect of the museum comes in the form of a gift. “Microsites,” said Liss excitedly. “Every person who enters, we’ll create a mini website for you.” As visitors journey through the maze, they’ll collect “keepsakes” on their smartphones, including cultural information, restaurant recommendations, resources on the environmental plights of Louisiana bayous and on recycling Mardi Gras beads, historical references, automatic boomerang videos, and—of course, Instagram-ready, envy-inducing selfies.
The element of participation has always been important to Liss’s vision of experience––“I never wanted this to be a [conventional] museum,” he said, describing the way participating in a Jazz Fest krewe years ago made him feel part of something, part of New Orleans. Of course, this has become all the more challenging in the wake of COVID-19, which has already pushed the $700,000 installation’s opening date back by three months. “At first, we just had to stop everything,” he said. “Locked everything up until we saw some regulations given for opening up to the public.”
Since then, Liss has been working with each artist individually to shift each exhibit into being totally “touchless.” “Ultimately,” he said, “everyone stepped up, were all so willing to make the changes. And I think that they actually turned out even better than before.”
Set to open for private tours of six or fewer this July ($29/person), then to the public later on August 1—JAMNOLA will be “the first experiential museum of the new normal,” said Liss. “I’m an eternal optimist, but I’m sure we’ll get through this. After crisis, the people will crave joy.”