Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Michelle Schulte, Chief Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the LSU Museum of Art, makes her way through the museum's storage room, where its extensive permanent collections are stored when not on display.
Have you ever wondered what treasures a museum might have hidden from view? After all, many museums contain hundreds, if not thousands, of objects in their collections. But even the largest institutions, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Louvre Museum in Paris, have only enough exhibition space to display a fraction of their collection at any one time, carefully storing the rest. These objects are tucked away from curious eyes and probing hands within conservation-friendly boxes and bins in darkened, climate-controlled, securely locked rooms. Off-limits to the average visitor, these storage rooms contain objects of sensational beauty and others that are simply peculiar. Considered holistically, a museum’s collection represents a microcosm of the public it serves, maintaining unto perpetuity those objects in which the community places value—monetary value, sure, but even more so in the priceless stories that each represents.
Image courtesy of NOMA.
Robert Gordy, "Rimbaud's Dream #2," 1971. Acrylic on canvas, 82 x 64 inches. Collection of New Orleans Museum of Art, 71.23. © The Estate of Robert Gordy.
I recently set out to explore behind-the-scenes at three Louisiana art museums. The obvious place to begin was the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), recognized as the oldest fine arts institution in Louisiana. When NOMA opened in 1911 as the Isaac Delgado Art Museum, the collection contained only nine artworks. Today, it holds nearly 50,000 objects, representative of many cultures. When asked about some of their treasures, Lisa Rotondo-McCord, Deputy Director and Curator of Asian Art, mentioned the recent bequest of a rare portfolio of forty-five small-scale prints by British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and an impressive number of works of Louisiana native Robert Gordy (1933–1986), whose hard-edged, geometric style was informed by his study of African art. His work, including items from NOMA’s permanent collections, is currently on display through October 11 in the exhibition Robert Gordy: Outside the Mainstream.
Image courtesy of NOMA.
Carlo Saraceni, "Our Lady of Loreto," c. 1600. Oil on canvas. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Edith Rosenwald Stern Birthday Fund and Museum purchase, Ella West Freeman Foundation Matching Fund, 70.28.
However, the story that really caught my attention was the recent discovery that a painting in NOMA’s collection was not what historians thought it was. “It was really embarrassing for everybody, but really fascinating at the same time,” said Rotondo-McCord. When NOMA acquired the painting in question in 1970, the original documentation referred to it as “Our Lady of Lima,” a rare example of art made in the Viceroyalty of Peru, a political subdivision of the Spanish Empire. The painting depicts a statue of the Virgin Mary, a common theme in seventeenth and eighteenth century art from the Spanish Americas. As such, the painting was widely published and exhibited internationally—“even at the Prado [in Madrid]!”—for fifty years. Then, out-of-the-blue in 2014, an art historian named Maria Giulia Aurigemma came across a copy of the same painting in the sacristy of the Church of San Bernardo alle Terme in Rome, signed by artist Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620)—thus revealing that the painting is actually not Peruvian at all, but Italian Baroque. On loan from 1998–2012 to the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, the painting is now on view back home at NOMA in a focused exhibition, this time under its true attribution: “Our Lady of Loreto” by Carolo Saraceni.
The collection at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge proved no less intriguing. Michelle Schulte, Chief Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, and Marianna Luquette, Registrar, guided me through their collections storage area—where I was privileged to view a pair of porcelain blueware Ming vases that survived a shipwreck in the South China Sea and a mahogany miniature sideboard once used to demonstrate its (unknown) maker’s talent. Too fragile to put on view, an intricately carved ivory basket from the nineteenth century is currently being recreated digitally by graduate student Meredyth Yorek as part of her doctorate.
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Image courtesy of the LSU Museum of Art
"Pierre, le Tigre": H. 31.75 x W. 16.75 x L. 80.25 inches. Steiff, Tiger, c. 1930. Mohair, glass, wood, and cotton floss. Gift of the Friends of LSU Museum of Art.
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Unidentified maker, Covered Jar, c. 1645. Porcelain. Gift of the Friends of LSU Museum of Art to the LSU Museum of Art
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Unidentified maker, Basket, c. 1800. Ivory. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry McCall, Jr. to the LSU Museum of Art.
But the object Schulte confesses as her favorite is a large stuffed animal—a tiger no less! Dating from the 1920s, this expertly handsewn and painted mohair tiger with glass eyes and carved teeth was made in Germany by the Steiff toy factory. Founded by Margarete Steiff in 1893, when a woman-owned business was very unusual—“more so in Germany than anywhere else in Europe,” pointed out Schulte—Steiff secured international fame after Margarete’s nephew invented the first stuffed bear with moveable limbs, better known today as the “Teddy Bear.” Schulte proudly divulged that she had a Steiff collectable bear as a child. “I kept it on a shelf because it was so important.” The museum’s tiger—which is nearly thirty-two inches high and eighty inches long—is most likely a commissioned piece. Schulte said he was once able to roar when you tugged on the pull tab. Purchased by the museum in 1996, the tiger was christened “Pierre” in a naming contest. Before its reopening downtown in the Shaw Center for the Arts as the LSU Museum of Art in 2005, the museum was known as the Anglo-American Museum and housed in the basement of Memorial Tower on campus. In those days, on game days and during university events, it was the custom to dress Pierre in an LSU jersey and place the mascot outside the museum for photo ops. The beloved Pierre now lords over the museum’s galleries.
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Image courtesy of the Hilliard Art Museum.
"Katsushika Hokusai," Manga-Volume II Series [16 Masks], 1836.
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Image courtesy of the Hilliard Art Museum.
Andy Warhol, "Karen Kain," 1980. © 2026 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Part of the Hilliard Art Museum's current exhibition: "Andy Warhol: Plus One."
Moving on to explore the holdings of the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, I met with Executive Director Molly Rowe. The Hilliard’s roots date to the 1950s, when W.E. Groves and A. Hays Town donated the first major artworks to the University of Southwestern Louisiana’s art exhibition program. A decade later, Lafayette businessman and philanthropist, Maurice Heymann, donated three acres of land to the university (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) for the building of an art museum. The Heymann family later also donated one hundred Japanese woodblock prints, among them works by famed artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), best known for his series titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. “He was ahead of his time but didn’t realize his importance until much later in life,” said Rowe. Hokusai’s work was widely circulated in Europe in the late 19th century, profoundly influencing such master artists as Monet and Van Gogh.
“People are surprised to learn they have access [to such treasures] right here in our community.”
—Molly Rowe, executive director of the Hilliard Art Museum
Our conversation moved on to the work of yet another master, Andy Warhol (1928-1987), the “Patron Saint of Pop Art.” The Hilliard was fortunate to receive more than 150 photographs and screen prints from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Photographic Legacy Project, which in 2007 donated almost 30,000 works from its collection to college and university collections around the country. “Before social media, Warhol was the original content creator … He always had a camera around his neck,” said Rowe. Intimate, observational, and at times voyeuristic, Warhol’s photography served to document his perspective of the consumer and celebrity culture of his time and played a major role in his studio practice. Warhol used his photographs as source material for the creation of his better-known silk-screened paintings and prints made in his signature Pop style. Rowe pointed out Warhol’s 1980 print of Karen Kain, a longtime principal ballet dancer for the National Ballet of Canada, which was inspired by a Polaroid photograph he took of her. Rarely on view due to light sensitivity, the photographs are currently on display in the museum’s galleries for the first time in more than fifteen years in the exhibition, Andy Warhol: Plus One, open through August 15. “People are surprised to learn they have access [to such treasures] right here in our community,” said Rowe.
Learn more about the museums featured at noma.org, lsumoa.org, and hilliardartmuseum.org.
