Orientalism: Taking and Making

In a fascinating and complicated collection of works from the New Orleans Museum of Art's permanent collection, Orientalism: Taking and Making, on display through December 31, 2019, presents the body of work representing the Western world's romanticism of the East. 

While often beautiful, these works of art reveal centuries of systemic racism, exoticism, and cultural misunderstanding that have—in many ways—survived all the way until today. The snake charmers and Bedouin horsemen depicted in the works of Jean-Leon Gerome and Adolf Schreyer are, on their face, a record of these explorers experience of Eastern architecture, geography, fashion, and customs. But in presentations of the region's people—often negatively portrayed as lazy, barbaric, or hyper-sexualized—one can see the lens behind which these Western artists worked.

noma.org.