Museum Review: The Germaine Wells Mardi Gras Museum at Arnaud’s
The drive to preserve history is stashed in every corner of New Orleans. Inside Arnaud’s, one of the largest restaurants in New Orleans, you can find the Germaine Wells Mardi Gras Museum where her personal Mardi Gras balls gowns and Easter hats are preserved.
Down a hidden hallway, you’ll see walls of intricate sequined gowns on mannequins that look like Elizabeth Taylor. If you’re visiting the restaurant for a meal or a drink, ask about the museum. They’ll be happy to refill your drink and find someone who is excited to show it off.
Restaurant History
Arnaud’s says they opened in 1918, but the earliest newspaper mention I found was April 1921. That doesn’t really mean much, but I also found a 1922 ad that seems to indicate they had been open a year.
The New Orleans Item, April 23, 1922, page 36
That’s still over a century of entertaining New Orleans crowds. The accumulated gowns are a time capsule of Carnivals past and the special experiences of one New Orleanian.
Count Arnaud Cazenave, the restaurant’s founder, died in 1948. He arrived in this country in the 1890s from France. Germaine was his daughter, and she ran the restaurant until 1978. Since then it’s been run by another family, the Casbarians, who seem committed to preserving the history.
The building is now 11 connected buildings that form a winding maze of stairs and mirrored halls with colorful, elaborately patterned wallpapers, the servers quickly whisking you up and down, creating a falling down the rabbit hole feeling. Somewhere along the way are nearly 20 private dining rooms and the climate controlled museum.
The museum opened in September 1983, just before the death of Germaine in December 1983. She claimed to be the queen of 22 Carnival balls, the most anyone ever claimed. The display is some of the gowns from her most famous reigns.It is a fascinating look at the history of Carnival societies from one person’s perspective.
Visiting
I’ve visited Arnaud’s for my birthday, for work lunch, for events, and for dinner before shows at the Saenger. I’ve been able to enjoy several memorable meals in the historic surroundings.
I recommend visiting Arnaud’s if you have interest in any of the classic New Orleans dishes or drinks. Bananas Foster, Cafe Brulot, French 75, baked Alaska, souffle potatoes, turtle soup, oysters every way, you can get it all and more at Arnaud’s and end with a museum visit and probably a history of Carnival from your guide. Not a bad deal.
Museum Review: The Southern Food and Beverage Museum
The Southern Food and Beverage Museum on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard is across the street from historic buildings and the New Orleans Jazz Market. It seems to be an anchor for a museum district in Central City. I visited on a quiet afternoon. The guide who helped me at the front desk was very informative.
Uranium Glass in the Absinthe Museum, an exhibit in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans
The exhibit starts with a section on Al Copeland and Popeye’s Chicken, who they credit with spreading the taste of Louisiana around the world. It then spills into the American Museum of the Cocktail and then the Absinthe Museum. The Absinthe Museum was a collection in a separate museum that closed in 2010. I spent most of my time soaking in the extensive collection of paraphernalia and in depth history. The hint about a former absinthe speakeasy in the French Quarter makes me want to run down another rabbit hole.
Then there is an exhibit on coffee and its history in New Orleans. The exhibit included green coffee beans and a video demonstrating cafe brulot along with a history of chicory as a coffee additive. I loved learning New Orleans receives beans from 31 countries, accounting for 530,000 tons or 30% of all of the coffee that enters the United States.
My favorite part of the museum was an exhibit dedicated to the women of the culinary history of New Orleans including contemporary legends like Susan Spicer and Leah Chase, as well as historical greats like Madame Begue and Rose Nicaud.
Woven in between the major exhibits are the stories of the food of Southern states, with many brand names mentioned. The last exhibit is, of course, Louisiana with king cake, snoballs, poboys, and St. Joseph’s altars featured along with famous restaurant signs. But no gumbo, pralines, callas, or jambalaya.
Overall, the museum is a wonderful look at the influential culinary history of the South with a particular focus on cocktails, New Orleans and Popeye’s Chicken. It was an interesting approach to associate the culinary history largely with brands, but I think that brands do define culinary history in a lot of ways.
Prospect.6: The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home.
After Katrina, the city earned our very own large scale art exhibit like the great cities of the world who prioritize art. Originally advertised as a biennial, it is now a triennial on its sixth iteration, Prospect.6: The future is present. The harbinger is home.
The Saginaw News, Sun, Oct 19, 2008 ·Page 31
Another thing popped up after Katrina — the slogan, “Be a New Orleanian, Wherever you Are.” Many people were still flung to the corners of the country, if they ever returned. Others had the experience of coming home after life “elsewhere” for a while. The refrain, slightly scoldy, reminded us that we still have strong roots, limitless cultural essence, and a name to uphold even if we had to leave our home. The easy, slow confidence of the well-fed, partying people who live in the cypress swamps fanning out from the bend in the Mississippi has left the world with colorful, friendly expectations. We proudly abide by being a New Orleanian, wherever we are.
Ignatius captured a sometimes sentiment of New Orleanians, “Leaving the city limits frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.” (A Confederacy of Dunces) I don’t think many realize how sarcastic John Kennedy Toole was being, even if Ignatius is earnest in his declaration. This insular attitude helps preserve a certain culture and helps us believe that we’d rather live here than anywhere else. But if we can’t…we’ll still be a New Orleanian.
Prospect.6 is entitled “The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home.” Art exhibits that skip a year are two are dramatic and semi-political like this. When I visited the Venice biennial, the theme was “May you Live in Interesting Times,” which is starting to feel like a curse. I got to see that viral hydraulic sculpture there; the piece that couldn’t save itself from bleeding to death.
This recent opinion piece about climate change coincides nicely with the theme of Prospect.6:
“A few years ago, when a Tulane University study found that the disintegration of the coastal marsh had already crossed an irreversible tipping point, and its lead author predicted that New Orleans, in the best-case scenario, would one day be an island in the Gulf of Mexico, some 30 miles off the coast, the headline in The Times-Picayune read, “We’re Screwed.” Other major American cities don’t talk like this. Other cities don’t live like this. But one morning, not very long from now, they will. On that morning, everyone will be a New Orleanian.” Nathaniel Rich, New Orleans’ Striking Advantage in the Age of Climate Change, November 30, 2024 [emphasis mine]
Be a New Orleanian, Wherever You Are has a new meaning. Look to the Crescent City to see how to behave in these interesting times, like so many before you. The future we’ve all been awaiting is lapping at our shores. The harbinger is, unfortunately, my home.
I’ve visited the Prospect exhibits since the beginning, even covering the first one for a now-defunct online magazine. The themes repeatedly bang up against the nature of the future, and this year states it frankly. I’ve visited a few of the Prospect.6 exhibits. Here are my impressions.
The Historic New Orleans Collection Gesture to Home by Didier William
The exhibit in the Historic New Orleans Collection starts before you enter the room. The ambiance changes, the lighting is intentionally dramatic. The artist used the whole room, sprawling like the swamp, a manmade swamp. A swamp becoming man. A man becoming swamp? The swamp is decay, stinky mucky polluted decay. The artist gave some insight into their thoughts in the description:
“Acknowledging that these trees can live over one thousand years, William regards them as witnesses to the past, having lived through European colonialization (sic), the transatlantic slave trade, the Haitian Revolution, and the Louisiana Purchase. Blending human and botanical elements, William explains, ‘All my paintings are about looking for home, looking for ground.’”
Witnesses to the the past that are becoming the past…
Press St.
One of the many cultures that made New Orleans but we have forgotten is the Filipinx community. I know almost nothing about this community outside of its existence, but the artist responsible for this wheat paste and several other pieces in the Prospect.6 exhibit is hosting a lecture on St. Malo. This wheat paste takes up the entire wall of the building and depicts the small water bound community, the first Filipinx settlement in the United States.
From the description: “Manilamen” or Filipino sailors and escapees from Spanish ships, established the community on a site previously settled by Indigenous people and formerly enslaved Africans. Stephanie Syjuco sourced engravings of St. Malo from an 1883 Harper’s Weekly essay, inverting the original black-and-white images so that structures, figures, and shadows stand out in ghostly white. The enlarged images are then adhered to outdoor facades using wheat paste— a type of glue made from starch and water. Over time, Syjuco’s outdoor murals will disintegrate, just as St. Malo’s former site on the Louisiana coastline erodes due to climate change.
Nearby on Press Street, Abigail DeVille’s installation called Carbon is part of a sound sculpture in the shape of a carbon cluster meteorites and the chambers of the human heart. From the description, “The sound in this artwork will evolve over the exhibition’s run. Beginning with abstract sound, eventually visitors will hear the names, ages, and descriptions of enslaved persons, read aloud by New Orleanians of corresponding ages.”
Harmony Circle
I love that the city is finally repurposing this prominent space for inclusive exhibits. The Sacred Heart of Hours and the Trees of Yesterdays, Today, and Tomorrow by Raúl de Nieves sit atop all the pedestal and urns available. de Nieves explained in the description, “The crowned heart evokes the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus, which carries significant spiritual resonances in Mexico and beyond. For de Nieves, whose work often explores Catholicism and Mexican folklore, its placement serves as a loving reset for a site once dedicated to memorializing the Confederacy and signals the relevance of Latinx immigrants in New Orleans. In the four urns surrounding the granite pedestal, de Nieves has installed brightly colored trees fashioned from thousands of recycled Mardi Gras beads.”
The Batture
The exhibit on the Batture provides a great opportunity to experience the world outside of the protection of the levees. It is a small walking trail along the banks of the Mississippi River with three very different exhibits along the way by Christopher Cozier, Marcel Pinas, and Andrea Carlson. All three deal with change, erasure, colonialism.
Exhibit at HNOCThe Trees of Yesterdays (Faith), the Trees of Today (Justice), the Trees of Tomorrow (Strength), the Trees of Now (Diligence) by Raúl de NievesExhibit at the BattureExhibit at the BattureExhibit at the Batture
Overall impressions
I love the idea of chasing art and ideas around the city every few years, inviting strangers and friends from around the world to indulge in the luxury of release through creativity. But then I worry about the emissions I’m creating by zipping back and forth to soak it in.
The themes for the Prospect exhibits seems to get more and more depressing each time, and I wonder if it’s my changing perspective. Or is it another luxury that a certain set who can zip around the world to look at art have to ponder the horrible future humans are facing without any real effect on their lifestyle.
Previous Prospect Exhibits
Prospect.1 — November 1, 2008-January 18 2009 Prospect.2 — October 2, 2011-January 29, 2012 Prospect.3 Notes for Now — October 25, 2014-January 25, 2015 Prospect.4 The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp — Nov 18, 2017-Feb 25, 2018 Prospect.5 Yesterday We Said Tomorrow — Nov 6, 2021-Jan 23, 2022 Prospect.6 The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home. — Nov 2, 2024-Feb 2, 2025
The Times-Picayune September 12, 2010 – page 42Prospect.2 New Orleans The Times Picayune, October 21, 2011, p. 104. The Daily Review, Mon, Apr 23, 2012 ·Page 4The Times Picayune, October 26, 2012, p. Prospect.4 New Orleans The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune Franklin, Louisiana, Mon, Dec 4, 2017 , Page 3
