Another vital part of the Arthur Roger overview involves social issues, so David Bates's powerful portraits of Katrina survivors elaborate on Simon Gunning's vivid views of the storm-ravaged Lower 9th Ward even as more meditative works by Jacqueline Bishop, left, Courtney Egan and Lee Deigard, above, suggest how the natural world is being strangely mutated by human activity all around us-- themes further elaborated by Luis Cruz Azaceta, Nicole Charbonnet and Cynthia Scott. A rich diversity of works by Willie Birch, Radcliffe Bailey, Bruce Davenport and John Scott, among others, hark to both the deep pathos that arose from the Atlantic slave trade as well as the buoyant street culture and sheer joie de vivre that define New Orleans as America's quintessential Creole city.
Striking gender studies by artists like Deborah Kass, left, and Robert Mapplethorpe provide provocative counterpoint to a wide variety of classic canvases by earlier and more formalistic, yet profoundly humanistic, New Orleans legends like the late Robert Gordy and Ida Kohlmeyer in a show where all of the work seems very at home with New Orleans' burgeoning 21st century art scene. ~Bookhardt / Pride of Place: The Arthur Roger Art Collection, Through Sept. 23, New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, 658-4100.