Look Don't Touch
Louisiana and Mississippi art museums offering online tours, lectures, and more
Gallery 600 Julia, New Orleans, LA
This Julia Street staple of the New Orleans gallery scene is owned and operated by art historian Dr. Susan Saward, and showcases a rotating monthly array of art shows and artist talks. Specializing in fine paintings of the South Louisiana landscape, as well as the street culture of New Orleans, the gallery’s website features an immersive 3D tour of the entire facility, where you can wander and zoom as you please. gallery600julia.com. k
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
One of the holy grails of New Orleans art museums, the New Orleans Museum of Art provides a large archive of online resources accessible to fans of nearly any genre of art and design, from Pre-Columbian artifacts to Italian portraiture and beyond. Click on the “Watch” tab on the museum’s website to view exhibitions, performances, lectures, tours, artist interviews, and more, plus a mobile guide and virtual tour, all from the comfort of your living room. noma.org.
Ann Connelly Fine Art, Baton Rouge, LA
Baton Rouge residents are sure to have seen at least one piece of Ann Connelly-displayed artwork around town, perhaps drawn to the gallery’s penchant for curating soft tones and textures of meditative shapes and subjects. During this period of social distancing, the gallery will be offering online tutorials via its Instagram page,
@annconnellyfineart, beginning with “How to Install Artwork”. Shoppers are also free to schedule private and virtual appointments. annconnelly.com.
LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA
Housed in the Shaw Center for the Arts downtown in the capital, the LSU Museum of Art offers an array of regularly rotating traveling art shows, from Asian collections and abstract contemporaries. It also offers an online, 360-degree tour of its permanent collection, which features work by mid-1800s masters to modern photographers, and more. lsumoa.org.
Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Walter Anderson gained his fame for being “the South’s most elusive artist,” one of the most distinctive stylists of the American modernists. The museum will soon release a series of educational videos, and it also partners with the University of Southern Mississippi to showcase a digitized portion of the collection to help you plan out your next in-person trip. walterandersonmuseum.org.
For digital resources about museums all over the world, check out the Museum Computer Network’s “Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, E-Learning, and Online Collections” at mcn.edu.