64 Parishes

Ancestral Artistry

The 2025 Documentary Film of the Year spotlights Black master artisans’ contributions to Louisiana architecture

Inspiring Shared Purpose

Norman C. Francis is the 2025 Humanist of the Year

A Life Behind the Lens

Pableaux Johnson (1966-2025) is the 2025 Documentary Photographer of the Year

For the Love of Cats and Dogs

Remembering the efforts to rescue and reunite pets with their owners post-Katrina, twenty years later

Book Magic

Jim Davis is this year’s Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities awardee

Celebrating Louisiana's Cajun and Creole Cultures

Festivals Acadiens et Créoles is the 2025 Champion of Culture

Music in the Streets

A Closer Walk: New Orleans Music History, Block by Block is the 2025 Best in Digital Humanities award winner

Arresting History

Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930 by John Bardes is the 2025 Book of the Year

A Light in Donaldsonville

Lt. Michael Brooks Shines as the 2025 Light Up for Literacy Awardee

The Cool Head in the Room

Willie Landry Mount Receives the 2025 Chair’s Award for Institutional Support

The Day of a Thousand Hells

The 1971 EF-5 tornado that struck near Delhi, Louisiana

Friends of the Farmers

A statewide coalition bolsters access to fresh, healthy food by training and funding farmers

Fiddle Around

Gina Forsyth answered the call of the fais-do-do

The River Meanders 

Looking at the oxbow towns of Louisiana

A Link to the Past

Down Home Meats, Inc., has produced a popular brand of smoked sausage in DeSoto Parish since 1982

Leap of Faith

A new exhibition celebrates the growth of New Orleans’s Vietnamese community over the past half century.

Manifest

Northwest Louisiana’s creative incubator

Gateway to Poste de Attakapas

An excerpt from Richard Campanella’s new book Crossroads, Cutoffs, and Confluences (LSU Press)

Summer on the Isle

Sunbathers on the dunes of Grand Isle, photographed by Eugene Delcroix (1943)

Poetry by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

Laughably Terrible

Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter is “easy to hate”

Louisiana as Home

Vietnamese Americans and the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

King of Olympus

The forgotten icon of the New Orleans AIDS crisis

In Her Nature

New public art celebrates trailblazing Natchitoches Parish naturalist Caroline Dormon

The Tupper Family Store

China, Louisiana’s Merchandise Museum

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

The ongoing battle between historic preservationists and trespassers

Poetry by Daniel W. K. Lee

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

A Musical Renaissance Man

A new foundation honors the life and work of Chris Stafford

Ever Green

Live Oak Farm will remain so in perpetuity, as Louisiana’s first Agricultural Land Easement

Tale of Two Fritters

While beignets reign among tourists, the cala has a long-standing home in New Orleans

Shrimp Boats and White Lace

The delightful bayou sketches of Madame Toussaint’s Wedding Day

Louisiana Lacunas

Why so few people along the Sabine and Pearl Rivers?

A Vanishing Bounty

Rare Audubon Folio now on view

“Easier to Sing Than to Talk"

Excerpt from You Are My Sunshine: Jimmie Davis and the Biography of a Song

The River Leads Home

George Rodrigue at the Alexandria Museum of Art

ArtBreak39

Celebrating the transformative power of the arts

Looking for “Petit Jean”

Legacies of French-Colonial Louisiana in Arkansas

The Spirits of New Orleans Seep into the Literary Landscape

The 2025 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival leans into New Orleans's intrigue

“Doom & Bloom”

Louisiana artist Chase Mullen weaves the natural with the man-made, vintage with new

Making Room

Advocates for coastal culture plan for Louisiana’s coming population shifts

"Sarcasm of Fate”

The imposing life and unceremonious death of Captain Thomas P. Leathers

Where the Fire Started 

Remembering Southern University’s Black Poetry Festival 1972–1980

“Better Than Doughnuts”

Fresh loaves at Jeanerette’s beloved staple, LeJeune’s Bakery

The House that Steam Built

Architect Walter Burley Griffin’s Cooley House

No-Man's Land

Fort Jesup remains a historic reminder of Louisiana’s time on the Mexican border

Unexpected Flowers

The mixed-media blooms of Carlton Scott Sturgill

Poetry by Jessica Kinnison

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

"A Child Out of Desire"

Clarence Nero’s semi-autobiographical novel Cheekie paints a vivid image of the Desire Housing Project

Revolutionary Rhythms

"Baba" Luther Gray’s Sacred Activism and Music

On the Shapes of Parishes

. . . and why Tangipahoa is elongated

Pressing Vinyl and Shattering Glass

The female-run record company that changed the soundscape of 1950s Shreveport

Sparkling Orangine

The Creole creation behind Barq’s

Bottoms Up

In Lake Charles, Salt Revival Oyster Co. seeds a new industry in neighboring Cameron Parish

A Long Arc of Injustice

A new exhibition explores the historical links between the institutions of slavery and mass incarceration in Louisiana

“A Meanly Built Village”

An excerpt from Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840: A Creole Community on the American Frontier

Before the Blue Dog

George Rodrigue and the Cajun Revival

Introducing the Visual Arts Issue

Featuring the art of Randell Henry

Time Capsules on Canvas

The fight to preserve Louisiana artist legacies

Abdalla’s: A Store for All Seasons

The Lebanese-owned department store that became a Southwest Louisiana staple

Artists of Public Memory

Public art commissions from Prospect

Poetry by Kelly Harris-DeBerry

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

Building with Bagasse

A Marrero company found sweet success with sugarcane fiber until the walls tumbled down

“Poison Portraits”

A toxic silhouette album provides an intimate look at early Louisianans

Looking Down and Back

The history and preservation of New Orleans’s ceramic street tiles

Salt of the Earth

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries

Dreams of Zines

Underground publications offer a window into Louisiana communities

José Francisco Xavier de Salazar Y Mendoza

The portrait artist who immortalized the faces of Spanish colonial Louisiana

Honoring Culture Bearers

Each October, Folklife Month recognizes Louisianans keeping the culture

A Different Kind of Buffalo

One person’s trash fish is another’s delicacy 

“A Game with Death”

The murder mystery novel that gripped Depression-era New Orleans

A Major Milestone for the Music of French Louisiana

Fifty years of Festivals Acadiens et Créoles

All Aboard

In Houma, LUMCON hopes to train up a sea-savvy citizenry

Louisiana’s Place in the Below-Sea-Level World

Notes on a topographic peculiarity

The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home

Prospect’s sixth edition of the citywide triennial

The Witching Hour

An excerpt from Nocturnal New Orleans

Boom or Bust in Shreveport 

Artists and fabricators push boundaries of creativity along Boom or Bust Byway

Twenty Years of the Louisiana Book Festival

Louisiana’s flagship literary festival starts a new chapter

To the Limits of the Saxophone

Musician, photographer, Renaissance man, and Humanist of the Year Dickie Landry

Louisiana’s Old Live Oaks

Story-laden trees anchor the Louisiana landscape

New Orleans as a Nexus of Power

American Empire, Bananas, and the Crescent City

The Man Who Won The National WWII Museum

Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, PhD, is the 2024 Champion of Culture

Making Eyes Light Up

Jane Wolfe is the Light Up for Literacy awardee

Indigenous Internationalism

Elizabeth Ellis’s "The Great Power of Small Nations" named the 2024 Humanities Book of the Year

Celebrating Creole Culture

"Creole New Orleans, Honey!" named Museum Exhibition of the Year

A Divine Epiphany

Freddi Williams Evans is the Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities awardee

What More Do You Need?

The Precipice, the 2024 Documentary Film of the Year, documents the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe’s fight for federal recognition

Keeping the Culture

"The old songs live forever"

Confessionals, Baseball, and Forever-Spreading Suburbs

Andre Dubus's Lafayette stories

Ils Sont Partis

Bush tracks of South Louisiana

Give Me Louisiana

The ballad of Louisiana’s former state song

The Last Thing I’ll Ever Write About Stuffed Shrimp

One writer’s crabmeat-filled obsession

The Moncla Gap

Of rivers, shifts, and avulsions

Bienvenue en Louisiane

Francophone developments in Louisiana tourism

A Gift for the Ages

The legacy of Laura Simon Nelson

The Gumbo Family Tree

An excerpt from "Gumbo" by Jonathan Olivier

Grammy-Winning Bluesman Bobby Rush

At ninety, he’s proud of his Louisiana roots

Poetry by Julie Kane

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

Looking Down on Creation

Ben Depp is the Documentary Photographer of the Year

The Red River Valley

A lens on North Louisiana

A Century of Garlic and Olives

The life, death, and rebirth of Central Grocery

The Dying Pelican

Romanticism, local color, and nostalgic New Orleans

An Ominous Effervescence

The Bayou Corne sinkhole

Mayhaws

The sour-sweet taste of grandmother’s house

Perique Tobacco

A St. James original

Crossing Over

The Miss-Lou Memorial Day Parade

“Leave Your Rought Clothes at Home”

The history and legacy of the Ninth Ward’s Law and Desire corridor

Motherhood and Its Malcontents

Patty Friedmann’s The Exact Image of Mother

Poetry by Brad Richard

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin

52,000 Irises Saved—and Counting

Louisiana Iris Conservation Initiative

Colonial Hubris

Louisiana, Carolana, and the imperial chess match of 1699

The Long Game

Longleaf pine restoration contends with arson in Vernon Parish

Voice as Instrument

The improvisational artistry of Germaine Bazzle

That’s a Mighty Fine Tomato

Creole tomatoes and the women who love them

Tall Orders

Two new exhibitions shine “three great lights” on the history, symbology, and lore of Freemasonry

Won’t Bow Down. Don’t Know How.

An excerpt from The Danse Macabre: Celebration and Survival in New Orleans by Cheryl Gerber

Weaving the Immigrant Journey into Art

Iranian-born Sara Rastegar curates Living the Unknown

Literary Love Affair

Celebrating writers’ attraction to New Orleans

Peculiar and Incendiary

Julian Moreau’s The Black Commandos.

Against the Current

River pilots in an age of automation

The Other “Undocumented” Workers

Illegal free Black labor in antebellum New Orleans

“Pumps and the Opera”

New Orleans was an operatic capital, with people of color often at the fore

The Life and Work of Elizabeth Brandon

An elegant refugee who became an unsung hero of Louisiana French folklore

Of Basins and Watersheds

An alternative view of Louisiana’s geographical context

Choctaw Gumbo

The dish owes many debts to Native cooks—but not its name

Long Live the Swamp Fox!

North Louisiana’s Tony Joe White

64 Parishes Welcomes Alison Pelegrin

The new Louisiana Poet Laureate shares work about people, places, ruination, and rebirth

Integrating Grambling

Mary Barnes and the Louisiana Civil Rights Movement

The Orphan Train Museum

Opelousas commemorates a complex child welfare project

Outsider in Ouachita Parish Politics

George B. Hamlet, Monroe’s first Black mayor

From Whole Cloth

Culture Shock

Discovering Cajun and Creole music

Mapping Trans Joy

A community finds belonging and resists erasure

Almost as Good as Football

Robert Mann’s Kingfish U

Victor Séjour, La Société des Artisans, and Afro-Creole Literary Protest

An excerpt from Creole New Orleans in the Revolutionary Atlantic, 1775–1877 by Caryn Cossé Bell

The Art of Language

The Art of Language

Looking at Louisiana

A new photography book from The Historic New Orleans Collection

The Warhol Generation

The LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge premieres Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection

Cheers to 25 Years!

A rejuvenated Creole Heritage Center continues to empower Louisiana Creoles

De-Satch-uration

Louis Armstrong’s complicated relationship with New Orleans

Lost

What the ivory-billed woodpecker can teach us about the unknown

“New Orleans Threw a Party and Nobody Came”

The 1984 Louisiana World Exposition

Eye in the Sky

A Houma-based blimp squadron

Into Thin Air

The loss of Shreveport’s C. C. Antoine House highlights a need to protect vulnerable historical sites

“Land of the Defunct Orange Tree and Ice-Burdened Palmetto”

The Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899

Poetry by Gina Ferrara

Selected by outgoing Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

Lincoln Parish Turns 150

A century and a half for the Reconstruction-era parish

Silent No More

Uncovering Black history in Iberia Parish

“Why Don’t You Come on Over, Valerie?”

How Thibodaux’s cathedral obtained its patroness

Always on the Threshold

“God, don’t let me die before I do something useful.”

From Angola to the Smithsonian

Self-taught artist Welmon Sharlhorne

Celebrating Folklife Month

Honoring those maintaining Louisiana’s cultural richness 

I Am What I Nyam

Sweet potatoes are not yams—usually

Closing Time

A review of Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement

Louisiana as Scholarly Inspiration

The sojourn of Élisée Reclus

Lee Allen Zeno Adds the Groove Glue

Diverse, inventive, rock-solid, and soulful

“A Very Nice Lady”

The Chris Owens legacy

“I am going to do something for you.”

An excerpt from Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU by Robert Mann

Critical Mass 8 Best of Show Visual Artist Joe Bluhm Has His Head in the Clouds

Joe Bluhm and Dominique McLemore exhibit at artspace in downtown Shreveport

Knowing Who We Are: A 20th Anniversary Exhibition

On view at Ogden Museum of Southern Art through February 2024

Une place à la table

French tables help perpetuate Louisiana’s linguistic heritage

Immunocapitalism

The Humanities Book of the Year is Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom by Kathryn Olivarius

Cajun Culture Bearers

Roots of Fire is the LEH Documentary Film of the Year

An Invention You Can Pour

An excerpt from The Vieux Carré by John DeMers

From Freeman and Harris to Orlandeaux’s

A Shreveport family upholds more than a culinary legacy

The Rost Home Colony

The rise and fall of a Reconstruction experiment

Summer Nights and a Salute to Henry Price

The man who shines his light on NWLA arts and artists

The Case of the Electrified All Girl Band

The mystery of a two-hit wonder

Louis Prima and the Sicilian Sound

The influence of Italian immigration on jazz and swing

Poetry by Chuck Perkins

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

Five Acres and a Mill

Organic rice cultivation in Rapides Parish

Liberation on Their Own Terms

Freedom on the Move is the 2023 Best in Digital Humanities awardee

Why Is Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish?

Notes on parish topography

American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith

Examining democracy in a traveling exhibition

Creole New Orleans, Honey! The Art of Andrew LaMar Hopkins

A self-taught artist explores Louisiana’s Creole past

A Bar Called Charlene’s

The lesbian dive that became a nexus for gay rights in New Orleans

Where the Locals Eat

Monroe’s Mohawk Tavern

Diet Gospel

H. Leighton Steward’s Sugar Busters!

A Scholar and an Advocate

Marianne Fisher-Giorlando is the 2023 Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities awardee

A Champion in the Senate

Introducing the 2023 Champion of Culture, State Senator Gerald Boudreaux

Hands in Sacred Dirt

Documentary Photographer of the Year Jenny Ellerbe’s images of Native American mounds

Sharing the Range

Chef John Folse is the LEH’s 2023 Humanist of the Year

The Power of One

Megan Holt is the 2023 Light Up for Literacy awardee

Scandals in Bohemia

Celebrating twenty years of SASFest, creating a fringe fest, and a new twist on a favorite tradition

Color Me Intrigued

Ellen Soffer’s evocative use of color

The Irrepressible Bobby Marchan

From drag to rap promotion and everywhere in between

From Little Acorns

Oaks celebrated on a Books Along the Teche bike tour

Possums in the Rafters, Fiddlers on the Floor

The Blue Moon Saloon and Guest House

Who Will Pick Up the Czech?

Libuse keeps central European traditions alive in central Louisiana

“I’m Not Playing”

An excerpt from Moving the Chains: The Civil Rights Protest That Saved the Saints and Transformed New Orleans

Bad Romance, Bad Research

Cornell Woolrich’s Waltz into Darkness

Striving for the Ballot

“Yet She Is Advancing”: New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878–1970

Spring Tonic

Foraged vegetables created the restorative gumbo z’herbes

Eclectic Erudition

Two luminous, youthful musicians

Sportsman’s Paradise, or Paradise Lost?

The Toledo Bend Reservoir

Pillars of Salt in the Marsh

The changing terrain of Cameron Parish

Put a Lid on It

Sartorial mainstay Meyer the Hatter

Poetry by Karisma Price 

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy 

The St. Joe Brick Yard

Hiding in plain sight

Tournoi de la Ville Platte

Defending the cotton crop with old-fashioned horsemanship

Warning: This Article Could Be Banned

In Louisiana, like the rest of the country, attempts to ban books rise during times of cultural shifts that discomfort segments of society.

Four Women and Their Languages

Lessons from the Houma Language Project

Brown Pelican

An excerpt from Rien Fertel’s latest book from LSU Press

Location Is Everything

The upcoming relocation and restoration of the Pacale–Roque House in Natchitoches will reshape the riverfront of Louisiana’s oldest city

A Bilingual Conspiracy?

The controversial kickoff to the twinning between Lafayette and Moncton, New Brunswick

Gone But Not Forgotten

Louisiana’s small cemeteries at risk in changing landscapes

Between the Guitar Solo and the Ooh-La-La

Farewell to King Louie Bankston

Peace, Justice, and the Cajun Way

Tim Edler’s Crawfish-Man

What Might Have Happened at Manchac

New Orleans was nearly relocated to a site near Baton Rouge

Nose to Tail

A foodway born out of necessity is maintained as a tradition

The Heart of Prime Time

Book series set the stage for every Prime Time program

Poetry by Sunni Patterson

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

The Dixie Mafia Lonely Hearts Scam

A personal-ad scam run out of Angola led to a double murder

“Don’t Let the Rain Fall on My Face”

The wooden grave houses of Talbert-Pierson Cemetery

Flipping the Narrative

Telling the story of urban enslavement

Local Stories, Global Industry

Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou by Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis

Step into the Notre-Dame Cathedral

An augmented reality experience at The Historic New Orleans Collection

I Wanted to Read About the South: Becoming a Writer

An excerpt from Cherie Quarters: The Place and the People That Inspired Ernest J. Gaines, by Ruth Laney

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers

New exhibition traces evolution of Black studio photography  

Vive le français

Immersion programs seek to arrest French’s retreat from Louisiana

Thatho Ilpa Innihta

How the Coushatta describe Good Friday

The Iberville Stone

The mystery behind one of the Gulf Coast’s oldest colonial relics

End of the Line

Plaquemines Parish architecture

New Orleans Street Vendors

When groceries came to you

Inventing Jazz

Big talker Jelly Roll Morton exaggerated—but not much

Prime Time and Museum on Main Street

Of, By, and For the People to pilot in Voices and Votes parishes this fall

The Reach of New Orleans Drumming: “He Taught Me a Lesson”

An Excerpt from Drumsville! by Robert H. Cataliotti

Louisiana before Louisiana

The first European look at what became our state

A Fearless Creator of Fresh Material

Tommy McLain’s late-career classic

Cracklin’ Hound

The delights of fried pork skin

October Is Folklife Month

Honoring tradition bearers and those who preserve Louisiana culture

Monroe’s Miller–Roy Building

Chitlin’ Circuit heritage preserved in a mixed-use space

Memories of Nonc Tom’s

A photographer’s ’70s sojourn in Basile

Old Mobile

Archaeological treasures in Louisiana’s first capital

Looking Deeper at Poverty Point

Preservation-conscious technologies marry exploration and stewardship

Los Adaes

An old capital of Texas and center for Native trade

Buried Histories at Evergreen Plantation

Homes used for centuries tell of their past residents’ lives

Poetry by Cindy Levy

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

“We’re All Sha-Ho Now”

The Caddo grass house, destroyed by a deadly tornado, reopens this fall

Great Balls of Fire

“La Fin du Monde,” the Red (or White) Scare, and the story of the Great Meteor of 1957

KaDavien Baylor’s Larger-Than-Life Mural Messages

KaDavien Baylor’s Larger-Than-Life Mural Messages

Object Care

A tale of erasure, restitution, and possible resolution

Nueva Orleans

A closer look at the city’s Spanish history

The Leg-Brace Saint

New Orleans’s St. Roch Chapel gets a facelift

Brief, Brutish, and Bacchic

Nancy Lemann’s Lives of the Saints

Caribbean Connections

Foodwise, Louisiana and its island neighbors are south of the South

Jazz at the Lakefront

Lake Pontchartrain’s shore was an early jazz locus

The Dodds Brothers

Baby and Toilet outshone their names

Monroe Is All Decked Out in Art Deco

Handsome and diverse additions to the skyline

In-Person Programs Return

Renewing connections, expanding impact

Transfer of Souls

Erna Brodber’s Louisiana

Batmania

Batman Black and White: The Sketch Covers

Widow’s Mite

Freedwoman Eliza Dorsey’s struggle for a Civil War pension

Safe Haven

Reflections on Louisiana Green Book sites

The Helis Foundation John Scott Center Opens

A new interactive gathering space will showcase the artist’s life and work

Exit Stage Right

Zack Smith’s festival photographs

An Urban Landmark, Reframed

An Urban Landmark, Reframed

Poems by Jennifer Reeser

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

Getting (Away from) the Vapors

The ancient medical theory behind the Louisiana landscape’s transformation

The Nile Comes to Bayou St. John

The New Orleans Museum of Art presents Queen Nefertari’s Egypt

Cooking Up a Storm with Jarred Zeringue

Rebuilding a smokehouse after Hurricane Ida

Who Belongs to the Good Earth?

A Houma museum commemorates the parish’s Black heritage

Une danse de la pluie

A poem by the Poet Laureate of French Louisiana

A Lot of Saxophones

Cecilia’s own saxophonist Dickie Landry

Amédé Was the King

Creole musician Amédé Ardoin’s legacy

In the Wind

A petroleum state explores wind power

Peaches Records

A record store acts as a musical and social nexus

The Hatchet Heroine

Carrie Nation invades New Orleans

Trying to Pocket the Key

Grant’s Canals and the assault on Vicksburg

John Barbry, Champion of Culture

A career spent advocating for Tunica–Biloxi traditions

Fatima Shaik’s Economy Hall Named the 2022 LEH Humanities Book of the Year

The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood

Museum Exhibition of the Year

The permanent exhibition at the new Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience

How to Tarp the Past

Hurricane Ida forces public historians to make difficult decisions

All’s Fair in Love and War

French Quarter Sicilians and Italian POWs

Rooted in Louisiana

A conversation with Shreveport-native and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown.

Saints, Tribes, and Kings

The origins of Louisiana parish names

Global Connections, Louisiana Roots

Honoring Joyce Marie Jackson, PhD, with a Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities Award

Cultural Restoration

Homes and beaches can be rebuilt after Ida, but what about culture?

A Virtuoso from Vidalia

Children Still Play

What the Children Said: Child Lore of South Louisiana

Be about Beauty

Life and writing with Kalamu ya Salaam, LEH Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities Award winner

Mudbug Envy

A shellfish allergy renders a food columnist wistful

It’s 1861 Somewhere

The Neutral Ground is the LEH Documentary Film of the Year

Backstage at A Streetcar Named Desire

New THNOC exhibition goes backstage at a classic drama

Making Magic Happen

The 2022 Light Up for Literacy Award goes to Jeannine Pasini Beekman and Tracy Cunningham

The Vanishing Black Bars of New Orleans

The LEH Documentary Photographer of the Year chronicles community spaces under threat

Teacher, Sculptor, Sketcher, Builder

Bruce Allen is NWLA arts’ man for all seasons

Still Shouting “Stella!”

Celebrating A Streetcar Named Desire’s 75th anniversary

I’ll Play with You

Ruby Bridges is the 2022 LEH Humanist of the Year

Poetry by Gian Smith

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy

Springtime in New Iberia

Arts and culture blossom by the Teche

Heirloom Variety

A St. Martin Parish farmer keeps Acadian brown cotton growing

Linguistic Kitsch

French, Yat, and other modes of speech add a je ne sais quoi to Louisiana’s culture—and marketing

Wearing Masks 364 Days a Year

John Rechy's City of Night

"Drink Your Juice, Shelby"

Natchitoches stars as a thinly veiled version of itself in Steel Magnolias

It’s More Than Just Great Bass Fishing

Toledo Bend Reservoir is a keeper

Poetry by Sheryl St. Germain

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Jack Bedell

Peru, Who Knew?

Creole connections exist between South Louisiana and South America

Last Gig in Natchitoches

Jim Croce died shortly after playing at Northwestern State University

The Formation of Reggie Adams

The story of the lone known Black victim of the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge tragedy

No Place for Ketchup

In Monroe–West Monroe, a rising tide lifts all gravy boats

“The Levee Is the Problem”

Historically deprived Black communities reel from Hurricane Ida

Unpeopled Louisiana

Mapping remoteness

A City Worth Saving

Confronting a changing Gulf Coast

More Precious Than Rhinestones

Louisiana’s festival queens act as local advocates and bearers of tradition

Mama Oretha and Tee Jean

Family memories of two civil rights icons

Louisiana’s National Champion

No, not LSU (but close)

Fais Do Do: Louisiana Lullabies

A collection of songs for children in Louisiana French

Traditions in Wood

Cabinetmaker Greg Arceneaux brings artistry and heritage to his craft

Plas Johnson

A prolific session musician with a sound all his own

Leather Britches Smith

The labor rebel and mythic outlaw of Beauregard Parish

“Call Me Shakbatina”

LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker

Lessons Even in Silence

K. Stephen Prince’s The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot of 1900

Off to School!

Prime Time becomes an approved vendor partner for the Louisiana Department of Education

The Poinsettia Tree

A holiday tradition continues at the R.W. Norton Art Gallery

Father and Son Artists Invite You Along for the Ride

Mike and Larsson McSwain’s pandemic travel sketches

The Greatest Free Show on Earth

Making Mardi Gras marches into THNOC’s exhibition enter

Mona Lisa Saloy

Louisiana’s new poet laureate writes about and for Black Creoles of New Orleans

Styling Out

An excerpt from the new book Dancing in the Streets explores the planning and artistry behind social aid and pleasure clubs’ finery

Oh, Casanova

How a Cleveland R&B song became a New Orleans brass band staple

Quarrels with America

Robert Stone's A Hall of Mirrors

Back to the Future

Recommitting to public art and art education in northeast Louisiana

The Liberace of Wellness

Fans are still wild about French Quarter native Richard Simmons

Both Water and Country

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen

Louisiana Hill Country

Not so high and mighty

Stumble Upon the Fun in Caddo Common Park

Uncommon entertainment abounds with Culture Fest, Hoots & Hops, and Skeletal Survival & Monster Mash

They Gave Us a Beach

The memory of a Black beach on Lake Pontchartrain

On Birding in Louisiana

There’s plenty of competition in looking for birds

The Boot on the Diamond

Football-mad Louisiana does well at baseball, too

Why Not Boogie with the Boogie Man?

Rougarou Fest saves the Cajun werewolf and other traditions

Evangeline: Evolution of an Icon

A new exhibit at West Baton Rouge Museum

Spark Boxes

Special deliveries of PRIME TIME

A Labor of Love, and a Monumental Resource

A major milestone in the documentation of Cajun and Creole music

Jumping Jehoshaphat!

The legacy of UL Lafayette trampolining coach Jeff Hennessy

October Is Folklife Month

Recognizing culture bearers and tradition keepers

Lunkers and Specklebellies

Bass fishing and waterfowl hunting in Louisiana

Quarter Moons Rising

Reviving the South’s hottest night spot

In Search of a Rosenwald School

Relics of a Jewish philanthropist’s work to further Black education

Louisiana’s Special Squashes

The Thanksgiving season brings the region’s two favorite squashes to the table

Reach for the Back and Pray

Frogging in Jefferson Davis Parish

On Okra

This small green pod tells the history of Africans in diaspora

Hot Splashes

Fermented chile sauces are a common fixture on Louisiana tables

Strawberries

A Happy Reopening

The Masur Museum reopens with an exhibit from Letitia Huckaby

Peas, Beans, and Cornbread

Simple staples with deep roots in North Louisiana

The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience

Opening this year on Howard Avenue in New Orleans

The Thing That Ate Abbeville (Kind Of)

Things that go bump in the Louisiana night

Patsy Vidalia

A drag star shone in New Orleans's 1950s nightlife

Misery Tea

Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change

Lighting Up Louisiana

Bevolo celebrates seventy-five years

Plantation Gothic

The first published short story by an African American author and its Louisiana roots

Realms of the Coin

Spanish coins for luck, comfort, health, and protection.

Poetry by William J. Jefferson

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate John Warner Smith

The Ties That Bind

Hoodoo and Vodou’s indelible connection

Resetting the Stage

When audiences eventually return to the Official State Theatre of Louisiana, they’ll find it better off than it’s been in a long time

Crafting to Scale

Women in a Houma family adapt a utilitarian tradition to artistic ends

Local Vintage

Louisiana’s sweet citrus wine

Putting the “West” in the West Bank

Putting the “West” in the West Bank

Sick As a Horse

The Great Epizootic devastated New Orleans’s equine population

Defying Injustice in the Deep South

Deep Delta Justice by Matthew Van Meter

Witness to Change

Summer reading for a shifting world

The Bakowski Bridge of Lights

Art and technology energizing Shreveport–Bossier

Celebrating a Master’s Centennial

John Clemmer at 100

Little Voices, Big Ideas

PRIME TIME hits the airwaves

Mystery in Motion

African American masking and spirituality in Mardi Gras

Louisiana and the Defender

How Chicago’s legendary newspaper inspired migrants and amplified local journalism

Catching Rats

Memories of the Louisiana fur trade

Poke Sallet: Pretty and Poisonous

Don’t worry—just boil it three times

No Such Thing As a Free Lunch Anymore

Saloonkeepers’ choice: no money or customers?

The Curious Story of Sagamité

The surprising linguistic and cultural confusion behind corn porridge

Poetry in a Pandemic

Discussing the ways poetry can help the spirit in these disruptive times

Heart of a Tiger

How a Monroe man’s legacy nurtures community, economy, and international relations

“Operation Ouch”

A look back at past mass-vaccination campaigns in Louisiana

Unalaska, Heroic Dog of Antarctica and Ouachita Parish

Member of Admiral Byrd’s expedition perished in Monroe

Egg Pocking

Cracking good Easter fun

Sent South into Bondage

A historian chronicles kidnapping in antebellum America

Cane Contemplations

Sweetening the present, remembering the past

“You Smell Like a Garbage Can!”

The raw, raucous blues of Boogie Bill Webb

On That Word “Delta”

Fluid feature, fluid meaning

Port Fourchon

A facility providing an example of coastal cooperation

The Rebel in Us All

School desegregation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana

An Archive for Antoine’s

Organizing the history of the culinary icon

Carol Bebelle, Champion of Culture

The power to produce change

Defining a Disaster a Century in the Making

Historian Andy Horowitz looks back to understand Louisiana’s most devastating storm

Wolf at the Door

Amid a bumper crop of Louisiana-themed podcasts released in 2020, Slow Burn: David Duke stood out for its breadth and humanity

A Cautionary (and Funky) Tale

Professor Longhair: Rugged & Funky is Humanities Documentary Film of the Year

Domestic Conflict

Photographer Abdul Aziz documents tumultuous times

Frank de Caro

A well-loved folklorist will be remembered for kindness, humor, and scholarship 

John Scott: Dancing at the Crossroads

John Scott is the 2021 Humanist of the Year

An Iconic New Orleans Event, Virtually Yours

The festival bounces back with an online iteration

The Power of Passion

The 2021 Light Up for Literacy Award goes to Dr. Patricia Austin

The Art of Seating

Two Hundred Years of American Design

Once in a Millennium Moon

Celebrating 20 years of Shreveport's mega mural

Finding Economy Hall

Remembering the politics and philanthropy that preceded the jazz

The Cultural Oak Tree

Natural symbols for southwest Louisiana resilience

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and the Future of Louisiana Studies

Looking at the career of an influential scholar

From Holy Cross to Oakland 

Poetry by David Havird, selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate John Warner Smith

A Pox on All Their Houses

Valerie Martin's A Recent Martyr

William Haney and Haney’s Big House

An African American businessman ran a popular Ferriday nightclub

Indian Peace Medals

European powers used awards to keep Native allies on their side

One Night in Louisiana

What if Abraham Lincoln had died in an 1828 scuffle?

King Crude

A review of A Thousand Ways Denied by John T. Arnold

Giving It Up for Lent

The history and future of the meat-free Lent

King Bees and Wannabes

The legacy of Slim Harpo

Louisiana’s Loess Bluffs

A cultural region?

Jewels of Plaquemines Parish

Coastal challenges threaten Fort Jackson and the Orange Festival

“Equal Rights to All Men”

Divergent coverage of Jim Crow– and Civil Rights–era violence in Louisiana

A Priest on the Color Line

In New Orleans and Breaux Bridge, Father Antoine Borias navigated race and saved souls

The Oracle at the Top of the Stairs

An aspiring writer meets Walker Percy

A Creole Activist in the Age of Jim Crow

The Work of Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Okra

Poetry by Ethan Leonard

Tunica Treasure

A chance discovery helped cement a tribal legacy

Chapel in the Woods  

Carmel’s Rock Chapel offers visitors a fascinating peek into the history of DeSoto Parish

St. Pierre et Miquelon 

These small islands are the last vestige of once-sprawling New France

Godforsaken, Imbecilic, and Insane 

John Dufresne’s Louisiana Power & Light 

The Lang House

A resurrected Anglo-Creole fixture in Mandeville

A Request for Removal 

Poetry by Donney Rose, selected by John Warner Smith

The Big Cat and the Bigger Dog

Ernie Ladd, the Junkyard Dog, and the intersection of sports, race, and culture in New Orleans

The Rhythmic Art of Ronald Trahan

Capturing music in sculpture

Whirlybird

Monroe remembers an early helicopter enthusiast

Looking Past Privilege

The art of Clyde Connell

An Incredible Resource

The Dictionary of Louisiana French as accomplishment and aid

Pivoting from Pandemic

A new look for Christmas in the Sky

Celebrating a Monumental Life

A graphic novel illustrates Reconstruction

Acadian Brown Cotton

The fabric of Acadiana

October is Folklife Month

Louisiana honors its culture bearers

Top of the Boot

Louisiana’s original state line

artspace

Seventeen years giving Shreveport a broader sense of self and art 

Decoy Dynasty 

The unsung art of duck decoy carving 

The Canary Islands 

Louisiana’s Isleños trace their roots to a storied archipelago 

Taking It on the Road 

The Red Beans Road Show 

Lost Friends

Free people sought reunion with friends and family after emancipation

Eighteen Years of Hackberry Rambling

The gift of playing with venerable innovators

Gustave Blache III Scholarship

Supporting aspiring Louisiana artists

United for Justice

How two Black-owned newspapers launched Louisiana’s civil rights struggle

Rockin’ to a Risen Savior

The Louisiana Delta Easter Rock

The Schepis Museum

A historic house and museum in Columbia, Louisiana

Pontchartrain Conservancy

Environmental education in southeast Louisiana 

Digging Up the Roots of the Family Tree

An author comes to terms with a Klansman in the family  

Entwined 

Ritual wrapping and binding in contemporary southern art 

River Harvest

Hoop net fishing in Avoyelles Parish

The Liberty Theatre

Acadiana’s “Temple of Amusement”

Cultivating Understanding Through Children’s Books

PRIME TIME suggestions for helping children through difficult times 

Poetry by Brad Richard

Racial violence in New Orleans in 1900 and 2005

Obsessed with New Orleans

Rock journalist Nik Cohn’s Triksta chronicles a chapter in the city’s hip hop history

Morgus the Magnificent

New Orleans’s answer to Elvira and Joe Bob Briggs 

Extra Miles

Getting to know gas stations makes a flat road come alive

Emma Wilson Emery

Louisiana’s first poet laureate was female—and vehemently anti-war

Images of the Anthropocene

Hannah Chalew’s art for our time

Passed By

Louisiana off the Interstate

Not Our First Rodeo

The Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo is the longest-running fishing tournament in the United States

Buddy Bolden’s Blues

Did a simple vitamin deficiency cause the jazz pioneer’s mental illness?

The Bank of Pollock

One of Louisiana’s most endangered buildings

Mystery at the Museum 

Exciting discoveries in the archives 

Ellicott’s Line

How the 31st parallel shaped Louisiana

Poems by Merrill Guillory

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate John Warner Smith

A New Class

New inductees exhibition opening at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum in Natchitoches

Lift Every Voice

The sculpture of Frank Hayden

Books and the Badge

PRIME TIME at an Ascension Parish police station is a runaway success

Hungarian Settlement 

Central Europeans in Livingston Parish

I’m Architect Mike McSwain, and I Draw Pictures

Keeping drawing alive in a time of computer graphics

Harvesting Harvey

Notes from the field on the Memories of Hurricane Harvey in Louisiana Project

Jazz Ladies

Women have been fundamental in building support for jazz and its history

John Fred and His Playboy Band

Radio staple “Judy in Disguise” has Baton Rouge roots

Cajun Document

A new THNOC exhibition and book to explore Acadiana in the 1970s

Taking the Waters

Belle Cheney Springs—the southern Saratoga

A New Chapter at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum

Renovations refresh a lesser-known Shreveport museum

Angola: Fact and Fiction

Plentiful stories about the prison have cemented misunderstandings

Refugee Revolution

Covering the crisis that more than doubled New Orleans’s population

Gretna's Mechanickham

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 9

COVID Geography: Notes from New Orleans

This special quarantine issue of Geographer’s Space is produced in partnership with LSU Press

The Art of Procession

Photographer Charles Muir Lovell’s work reflects the power of place

Spy Boy Toy

A new medium for Mardi Gras Indian culture

City of Inspiration

Celebrating the city’s influence on the world’s literati

Arts Are Abloom in the Chuck

A spring preview of arts events in southwest Louisiana

White-Bread Evangelist

The starchy Acadiana staple is anything but plain

All This, and Dunces Too

LSU Press is the LEH’s 2020 Champion of Culture

She Shall Overcome

Newcomb Art Museum exhibition goes beyond the bars, winning the LEH’s Museum Exhibition of the Year award for Per(Sister)

Sailing While Black

The story of free black sailors trapped in Louisiana’s slave prisons

A Conversation with Terence Blanchard

Melissa A. Weber sits down with the 2020 Humanist of the Year

City From the Future

Mossville: When Great Trees Fall is a character-driven documentary with global implications

Poetry by Clare L. Martin

A glimpse into the world of horses

Center Stage

SRAC fosters the performing arts in northwest Louisiana

The Poor Man’s Truman Capote

Speed Lamkin stayed stuck in the other author’s shadow

Lifetime Contributions

Defenders of Cajun, Coushatta culture recognized for their efforts

St. Joseph’s Day

The Sicilian roots of a local feast

Pays d’Illinois and Pays d’en Haut

French colonization leaves cultural traces in the Midwest

Stained Glass, Geodes, and Fossils

The multimedia art of Karen Bourque

Standing Their (Shrinking) Ground

The Isle de Jean Charles relocation project ignores realities for Native residents

New Orleans Prisons

A geographic exploration

Shreveport Sluggers

The history of professional baseball in Shreveport

Everything is Connected

Dr. Lynn Clark is this year’s recipient of the Light Up for Literacy Award

Kid Stuff

Exploring the art of children’s literature

NOLA Resistance

Voices from the Civil Rights Movement

Alone but Not Forgotten

Folkloric Field Research

Documenting Louisiana’s musical heritage

Reenacting the German Coast Uprising

Performance artist Dread Scott and an army of volunteers commemorate resistance to slavery in recent performance piece

Grandeur on Government Street

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 8

Grandeur on Government Street

Baroque urban planning shaped Baton Rouge

One Night in Louisiana

Abe Lincoln’s bloody melee

Bust Fund Babies

The Grateful Dead got a sour reception in New Orleans

Critical Mass 8

Cultivating creativity and community

The Walls

Louisiana’s first state prison survives in archival images

Photographic Pioneer

An early New Orleans shutterbug was also an Ursuline nun

The Lake Charles Special

Record producer Eddie Shuler welcomed weirdness into Goldband Studio

“Je me sens chez moi ici en Louisiane”

Nigerien Moussa Sadou makes a home for himself in Louisiana

Freedom on the Move in Louisiana

Archived notices of people escpaing slavery plot a geography of resistance

A House on Royal Street

A historic renovation brings the past to the present

Sea Changes

Shirley Ann Grau’s debut novel evokes the coast

The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana: Preserving the Past to Make Way for the Future

An interview with Bertney and Linda Langley

All Black Boys Look Alike

Work by the new Poet Laureate of Louisiana

A Love Letter to Tensas Parish

A sculptor remembers a riverside boyhood

The End of the Great River

A photographer looks at the changing landscapes of the river’s final miles

Sounds of the Season

The Monroe Symphony Orchestra

Glitter and Be Gay

A gay Mardi Gras krewe shines in Acadiana’s capital

Preserving Our Roots

John Coykendall’s life in plants

Do Creoles Speak Creole?

Another look at language and identity

New Orleans Street Vendors

A long history of African American entrepreneurship

Introducing Louisiana Musical Legends

The LEH presents a new K–12 curriculum focusing on the sounds of the state

A Studio in the Woods

How artists are making science more accessible  

A Conversation with Cokie Roberts

In 2015 the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities honored broadcast and print journalist and author Cokie Roberts as Humanist of the Year.

View from a Windowless Room

The Angolite provides a journalistic outlet for the incarcerated

Building Coastal Literacy

Younger Louisianans get a scientific grounding in how water shapes our coast

Notes from a Gumbo Road Trip

A traveling writer stirs the pot

Innovative New Interpretations of Centuries-Old Music

The lyrical legacy of Caesar Vincent

Creole Trail Rides

Cattle drivers’ descendants keep their on-the-trail foodways alive

Hydrology at War

Bailey’s Dam at the Red River Rapids

Northern Hospitality

An interview with Chef Hardette Harris, the curator of the Official Meal of North Louisiana

Poke Salad

A survival staple that requires work to survive

Nutria à l’Orange

It takes a bold imagination to look at such critters and see canapés.

SRAC Is Making New FriendsWithYou

Stumble upon the fun in a Rainbow City in Shreveport’s new Common Park

“Too Damn Mean to Cry”

A Harlem Renaissance look at the ruin of a man

Humanities Enhance Medical Education

Creating place and purpose in a new medical school

Eggstatic Visions

The Abbeville Giant Omelette Festival

Enigmatic Stream

Photographer Richard Sexton captures the complexities of the Mississippi’s industrial corridor

Heart of Glass

Scottish designer Geoffrey Mann captures the musical rhythms of New Orleans

Backhowsa

The difficulty of finding the outhouse in Sicily

Hitting All the Right Notes

The Wideman International Piano Competition is music to the ears

Desperately Seeking Boudin

A hymn to the cherished sausage

Stuck in Their Craw

An iconic Louisiana species takes Berlin

Melrose Plantation

A rare example of an Afro Creole-owned plantation

Emma Wakefield-Paillet, MD

The first African American woman in Louisiana to earn a medical degree and practice medicine

Hog Wild

A secret festival is the highlight of the Madison Parish social calendar—for those in the know

Poetry by Martha Serpas

Chosen by outgoing Poet Laureate Jack Bedell

Suffering Sassafras

Insensitive harvesting threatens an iconic Louisiana ingredient

Five (or More) Things We Could Do at the Norton That You Couldn’t Do at Home

A catalog of wonders in Shreveport

September Competition

Shrimp Drying in Louisiana

A tale of industrial and political revolutions

DeRidder’s Gothic Jail

The “Hanging Jail” in Beauregard Parish offers architectural history and decades of ghost stories

Rethinking Reconstruction

A new history of Reconstruction in Louisiana and South Carolina reveals an alternative path not taken for US race relations

Listen Local

Louisiana-made podcasts provide a window into the inner life of the Bayou State

The Shreveport Water Works Museum

A North Louisiana site preserves engineering history

Cuts to Culture

Budget woes threaten the capital’s cultural institutions

Hidden in Plain Sight

Japanese internment in Louisiana during World War II

Nueva New Orleans

The role of Latino/as in rebuilding New Orleans

Do Cajuns Speak Cajun?

The complex relationship between language names and identity

Seeking Sanctuary

Award-winning glass artist Eric Hess curates artspace Summer of Glass

Piercing the Inner Wall

The art of Dusti Bongé

An Ignominious Anniversary

2019 marks three hundred years since the arrival of the first slave ships in Louisiana

Young Satchmo

Silent film clip appears to show Louis Armstrong as a teenager

The Poetry of Cassie Pruyn

Selected by Louisiana Poet Laureate Jack Bedell

C’est Si Triste Sans Lui

Silk art by Megan Barra

Keep Cool with Cooley

A Prairie-style historic home in Northeast Louisiana

The New Orleans Pop Festival

Fifty years since Louisiana’s Woodstock

THNOC Embraces the Contemporary

Art takes center stage as a new campus opens on Royal Street

The Many Lives of Marie Baron

A French orphan survived captivity in two countries to give an early testimonial of women’s experiences in colonial Louisiana

Putting the “64” in 64 Parishes

A geographical self-assessment

Each Moment

The value of focus and presence in artistic work

Black and Blue

Between the covers with Steve Cannon

Changing Course for the Tricentennial

NOMA awarded Museum Exhibition of the Year

Poetry by Darrell Bourque

Poetry by the 2019 Humanist of the Year.

A Cajun Girl’s Sharecropping Years

A first-time writer pens a vivid portrait of her Acadiana childhood

Suzanne Douvillier

The extraordinary life of a pioneering ballerina

Poetic License

Ashley Mace Havird is the current Caddo Parish Poet Laureate

The Speed of Culture

Two centuries ago, commerce and culture moved at the Mississippi’s pace

Connected Visions: Louisiana’s Artistic Lineage

A new exhibit shows off Alexandria Museum of Art’s enviable permanent collection

Acadian Modernism

Architect John Desmond made a modernist style just for Louisiana

Art for Humanity’s Sake

Newcomb Art Museum’s new exhibition addresses critical issues facing incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women

A Spanish Father and a Creole Daughter’s Monumental Legacies in New Orleans

An exhibition at the Cabildo looks at the Pontalbas’ architectural influence

Look at Little Sister

Linda Gail rocks her way out of Jerry Lee’s shadow

Treading Water

A local reflects on St. Bernard Parish’s generations-long struggle to stay afloat

Seeing the Sweet with the Bitter

Photographer Frank Relle sees beauty as crucial to his craft—and his message

A Resource Rich and Varied

Dr. Hiram F. Gregory receives award for Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities

Music with Porous Boundaries

The proud eclecticism of John Fohl and Corey Ledet

Monroe’s Marvelous Masur

An impressive art collection in a locally unique historic house

Love Letter to Leroy Jones

The trumpet legend shines in Cameron Washington’s documentary

Eight Thousand Books

Light Up for Literacy Award goes to Dr. Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell

High Among the Angels

Brugmansia aren’t your garden-variety gateway drug

Darrell Bourque

The 2019 Humanist of the Year talks about music, memory, and the power of storytelling

Gregory Kallenberg, Champion of Culture

The Shreveport visionary’s Prize Fest has incentivized innovation

From Dolls to High Heels

Making quinceañeras in Union Parish

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Marxism on the Bayou Teche

Barbara Giles’ The Gentle Bush rewrites Gone With the Wind

Ghosts of the Gulf

An unusual look at species impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Nurturing the Lower 9

A complicated tangle of public and private property ownership stymies restoration efforts for Bayou Bienvenue

He Showed Us What Carnival’s For

A new exhibition at the New Orleans Jazz Museum celebrates Professor Longhair’s Centennial

Newton Howard

The architect of Monkey Hill was also a painter of the Sportsman’s Paradise

Paint the Ouachita

A celebration of the river, steamboats, history, and beer

Beloved Objects

Tour of homes explores the private art of Shreveport collectors

Discovering the Lost 1866 Issues of the New Orleans Tribune

The issues provided honest coverage of the Mechanics’ Institute Massacre of July 30, 1866

Bold New Directions for Veteran Musicians

New releases from Charles Lloyd & the Marvels + Lucinda Williams and Walter “Wolfman” Washington

Gretna’s Mechanickham

A possible origin of its name

Creole Italian

Nystrom's book explores the backstory of Italian New Orleans

King Creole Turns 60

On location in New Orleans, Elvis staked his claim as an actor

Illuminated Wonderlands

The Alexandria Museum of Art exhibits the work of Hari & Deepti in Winter 2018

Can You Hear Me, Sergeant Blue?

A hard-boiled detective in an intergalactic world

Byway Blues

Mable John and the power of home

Junker’s Blues

A French Quarter rock-n-roll tragedy

From the series “Portraits of Our Father Drinking”

Portrait #1: An Early Start

Alright Is Not Alright

Lexicon: Languages of Louisiana

Bauhaus in Bossier and Shreveport

Shreveport architects Samuel and William Wiener are the subject of a forthcoming documentary

Mardi Gras Canceled

Ernest “Dutch” Morial and the 1979 New Orleans police strike

Lin-Manuel Miranda Gives 1,600 Copies of New Garfield Book to PRIME TIME Family Reading Participants

The books will be donated to families attending more than eighty PRIME TIME programs across nine states in Fall 2018

The Queen Bee of Louisiana Politics & the Misinterpretation of Nice

The there and back again story of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco

Cadastral Systems of Louisiana

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 6

Neutral Ground

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 4

Bivalvial Byways

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 2

Centroids

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 5

Up From the Deltaic Plain

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 1

Location, Location, Location

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 7

The Pine Island Trend

Geographer's Space with Richard Campanella, Episode 3

I Never Scream

The quiet poems and powerful legacy of Pinkie Gordon Lane

Grifter’s Paradise

Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side stalked the sordid side of Depression-era New Orleans

Listening to 300 Years of New Orleans Music: Playlist

Songs that inspired our tricentennial music issue

The Next Generation Considers the Next 300 Years

Tulane 2018 graduate Justin Gitelman spoke to members of the New Orleans music scene's next generation. Read what they had to say, and listen to his interview with NOCCA and Berklee grad Khris Royal.

High Society and the Myth of the Jazz Festival

Newport may not be Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden, but the film’s plot revolves around the myth of the festival as a way to turn sorrow to joy and bring the major players to romantic bliss

New Orleans Jazz Makes Room for All the Grooves

New Orleans has an unfair reputation as a city where the only jazz that people play is a century old

Echoing Your Voice: Trent Reznor’s New Orleans Sojourn Leaves a Mark

Reznor was damaged goods when he moved to New Orleans in 1995

Ha

The video for Juvenile's hit shows a community that was often ignored, despite the enormous contributions it was destined to make to popular music and culture in the United States

A-Maze-Ing: The Legacy of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly in New Orleans

Generations of black New Orleanians have made the band one of their favorites of all time

The Captain of Moving Crowds: DJ Captain Charles

Over thirty years, the DJ has impacted local music as much as traditional musical royalty

Child’s Play

Of all the choices that young people make, they almost never regret the music

Canal Street: A Hemispheric Boundary

That uptown–downtown negotiation wasn’t just a local one. It was tectonic: the two great cultural regions of the hemisphere were crunching into one another.

Turn Your Radio On

I was stopped at the light at Rampart and Canal the first time I heard Fats Domino sing “I was standing, I was standing on the corner of Rampart and Canal." This constituted an ultimate cosmic New Orleans moment.

Buona Sera

“Buona Sera” is New Orleans through and through, a song suffused with both poetry and party.

Fats, Fess,"Snag-A-Tooth Jeannie," the Meters and Bobby Marchan

Musicians, authors, artists, filmmakers and others share their favorite New Orleans songs

"Muskrat Ramble," "Blue Monday," Mahalia, Metal

Musicians, authors, artists, filmmakers and others share their favorite New Orleans songs

Bechet, Booker, K-Doe, "You Are My Sunshine"

Musicians, authors, artists, filmmakers and others share their favorite New Orleans songs.

Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello and a fan from Liverpool

Musicians, authors, artists, filmmakers and others share their favorite New Orleans songs.

Teen Photographers Embrace Louisiana's Equine Heritage

The photographs of the 3-C Cowgirls photography group are selected for display at the Paramount Room of Calcasieu Marine National Bank during the annual Spring Art Walk in Lake Charles

The Fantastical Imagery of SRAC's Christmas in the Sky

SRAC has been orchestrating this black-tie, glitzy, glamorous, internationally award-winning fundraiser every other year since 1996

Residential Genius

Louisiana Architecture Foundation, Hilliard Museum explore A. Hays Town homes

New Orleans Expatriates: Satchmo and Lil Wayne

People abandon their midwestern suburbs. They escape their very important northeastern jobs. They come to New Orleans for a taste of freedom represented, in part, by the artistic work of the greatest trumpet player who ever lived and the “greatest rapper alive.”

I’ll Fly Away

The hymn “I’ll Fly Away” has long functioned as a signal of that transition from solemnity into celebration

The “Tuba Fats” Riff

Anchored by the simple tuba part, melody after melody unfurls out of the trumpets, trombones, and saxophones. On the street, “Tuba Fats” can last for blocks.

"The Last Rose of Summer" at the French Opera House

Popular songs reached nineteenth-century New Orleanians from the opera stage.

"Liquor Pang” by Galactic ft. Morning 40 Federation

A contemporary blues with a seductive absence of regret.

Noise

It all became an aggressive gesture, a call into the night. We were still here.

Jelly Roll's Blues

The final two songs Morton recorded that day suggest a vanished world of barrelhouse bards.

Mia X: No Limit’s First Lady Shares the Sounds that Shaped Her

Listening to 300 Years of New Orleans Music

Editor's letter and table of contents

Ghosts of ’OZ

Tricentennial Exhibit Shows NOLA Love

An exhibition at the Cabildo celebrates the unique people, places, and things that have made New Orleans an extraordinary place for the last three hundred years

Southern Realities on Display in New Photography Exhibit

A new exhibition at Ogden samples the rich and diverse range of photography being practiced in the American South today

An Archival Collective Safeguards LGBT+ History

The Matrix of Creativity

Reading Tom Dent and renegotiating Black aesthetics in the new New Orleans

Is Louisiana in the South?

The varied lexicon of regional identity

Chroniclers of a Death (Incorrectly) Foretold

In 1968, two writers tussled over the fate of New Orleans jazz—and its festival

The Garrison Tactics

The New Orleans District Attorney reveled in the spotlight, hurling accusations against his enemies and using the media to advance his investigations.

Fishing for Answers

Charter captains debate the impacts of the Master Plan and the future of Louisiana's coast.

Grifter's Paradise

Nelson Algren’s "A Walk on the Wild Side" stalked the sordid side of Depression-era New Orleans

Plaquemines Picaresque

On the road with The Great Big Doorstep, the second and final novel by New Orleans writer E. P. O'Donnell

Where Art Leads Us

Summer artspace exhibitions follow the distinct journeys of two artists, Julie Crews and Melanie Parent

Tennessee, Revisited and Revived

Henry Roeland Byrd Fesses Up

A feature-length interview with Professor Longhair is released on DVD alongside the 1982 documentary "Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together"

Book Review: Freedom's Dance by Karen Celestan and Eric Waters

New collection is dedicated to the social aid and pleasure clubs of New Orleans

The Last Great Medicine Show

Dudley LeBlanc’s Hadacol promised miracles and delivered star power

Mrs. Officer

New Orleans’ first policewoman endured controversy to patrol vice districts

A New Beach for Louisiana

Caminada Headlands is the Coastal Master Plan’s largest completed restoration project

Huey Long vs. The Media

In his clashes with the press, the Kingfish used legislation, slander, and even physical force to control the message

Lost Highway

Jayne Mansfield's last days in Louisiana.

The Shimmering Mosaic of Louisiana Music

Ben Sandmel reviews new releases from Lloyd Price, Gregg Martinez, Sweet Cecilia and more

An Alarm of Riot

On November 23, 1887, mobs of white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families during a spree lasting more than two hours, throughout mostly black neighborhoods in the city of Thibodaux

Ghosts of Desire

Revolutionary art is rediscovered in a trash heap 45 years after its creation

They Built This City

New exhibition and book examine early New Orleans and it's people

A Lesson On Waiting

Make It Good: An Interview with Leah Chase

Zella Palmer talks with the culinary legend and 2018 LEH Humanist of the Year

Sugarcane and Sweet Potatoes

Louisiana's 200-year-old tradition of rum production is revitalized, with distilleries sourcing the necessary raw material from farmers across the state

Against the Flow

The lessons of the West Bay Sediment Diversion.

Location, Location, Location

Geographical, economics, and political factors led to siting of New Orleans, other Louisiana cities.

Critical Mass 6

The Shreveport Regional Arts Council's annual invitational exhibition reflects the energy, passion, and powerful talent of Northwest Louisiana artists.

Interview: Pat Mire

An interview with Pat Mire as he celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of his landmark documentary, Dance for a Chicken

Book Review: Images of Depression-Era Louisiana

New collection showcases three photographers from New Deal agency

Weaving a Trail

Artist Nick Cave weaves a trail in an uncommon tale of acceptance

The Historical Section

Photographs of Depression-era Louisiana capture a state on the verge of great change

Voices of the City

The Historic New Orleans Collection oral histories spark WWNO series

A Carnival Visionary

Louis Andrews Fischer was a Carnival visionary who designed iconic costumes, floats, and sets for Mardi Gras balls

The Rising Marée that Lifts All Bateaux

French immersion schools fuel bilingual economy

Fatima Shaik's The Mayor of New Orleans

"The novella is a critique of race, art, and politics that stings as much, if not more so, today than it did three decades ago."

Interview with a Vampire Scholar

The New Cartographers

Coastal communities in Plaquemines Parish plot the future with LA SAFE

Deep Cuts

The Ogden Museum of Art presents Prospect 4 and spotlights artist John T. Scott

Riders

Photographer Jeremiah Ariaz and writer Alexandra Giancarlo explore the long standing traditions of riders in Southwest Louisiana's Creole trail riding clubs

The French Language in Louisiana and Quebec

Richard Campanella initiates a cross cultural connection in an interview with French Canadian Lisanne Gamelin

A Message from Puerto Rico

This issue's Publisher's Column features a letter from César Rey Hernández, Director Ejecutivo de la Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades.

Freedom's Filmmaker

Remembering Royce Osborn

Commodifying Traditional Music

The prolific, controversial career of Ralph S. Peer

Twentieth Century Millennial: Revisiting Faulkner's Mosquitoes

Where is LA Art?

Directors of the state’s arts councils respond

The Cracker Jack: A Hoodoo Drugstore in the "Cradle of Jazz"

The Cracker Jack was apparently operating as a hoodoo drugstore by the 1920s, supplying customers all over the eastern United States

The Follies of a Film Economy

A century prior to New Orleans being dubbed “Hollywood South” for its thriving movie industry, the Crescent City was poised to become a major center for silent film studios

American Utopia

A history of the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony in Vernon Parish, the longest lived socialist community in America

#LACulture

Photographers use Instagram to share Louisiana

Fruits of a Passion

Laura Simon Nelson's collection of Southern Art is now on display at The Historic New Orleans Collection

For Home and Country

Louisiana State Museum's new exhibition in Baton Rouge looks at Louisiana during and after WWI.

Perfect Time

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, a 200+ year old clock was undergoing restoration in a New Orleans repair shop. It was completely submerged in floodwater.

The Tale of Deas and Poe

Artist Michael J. Deas envisions Edgar Allan Poe and his work

The Marsh Doctor

LDAF’s Blaise Pezold and an army of volunteers replant Louisiana’s fragile wetlands.

"The Gulf Provided"

Jack E. Davis charts the history of the Gulf of Mexico

America Hears Itself

New documentary on traditional music combines vintage and contemporary material

The Odyssey of the Greek Slave

The sculptor of a scandalous statue found a patron in an eccentric New Orleans financier

To Be Young Gifted and Black

A review of Jessica Harris's memoir, "My Soul Looks Back"

It's In The Water

Powerful forces in New Orleans turned fluoride into a Cold War battle

All Access Past

The Louisiana State Museum prepares to publish colonial documents collection online

Celebrating a Francophone Resurgence

Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) prepares for 50th Anniversary.

Living Color

Ogden Museum of Southern art exhibitions showcase William Eggleston and his influence

Cajun Strong

Advances in genetics provide new hope for Acadiana’s close-knit population of Usher's syndrome carriers

Great Raft Charts Its Own Course

The Shreveport brewery embraces experimentation to find success beyond Louisiana

Sights and Sounds of Storyville

The Historic New Orleans Collection has an exhibition complementing the recently published book, "Guidebooks to Sin"

Hot Fun in the Summertime

SRAC’s "Art of the Guitar Exhibition" celebrates James Burton, “Master of the Telecaster”

Channeling the Master Plan

The science behind saving southwest Louisiana’s working coast.

Hot Biscuits

Al Copeland and the race for perfection at Popeyes

A Friendship Interrupted

New Orleans and Cuba enjoyed a strong commercial relationship prior to embargo

Restlessly Inventive

Jim Steg was the most influential printmaker to be based in New Orleans in the twentieth century.

Westgate Necromantic

A Louisiana Forte

Lower Louisiana, where elevations may vary only by inches over miles, provides a unique challenge to mapmakers

Eric Waters

The New Orleans native captures the survival of a culture.

Taking Care of History

The longtime archivist and editor is this year's LEH Lifetime Achievement awardee

Sinister Scenesters

A brief history of Process Church's time in the French Quarter

Culture: Northwest Louisiana is Crushing It!

Critical Mass 5, murals, and tours make Spring 2017 a frenetic season of events in Shreveport

Memories from the Frontlines

LEH Documentary Film of the Year chronicles AIDS activism in northwest Louisiana.

The Goddesses at 100

An exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum focuses on the evolution of women’s krewes in New Orleans from the 1890s to the present

A Master of Place

First major retrospective of James Michalopoulos opens at Ogden

Regina Scully Connects with Japanese Art and a NOMA Curator

The museum’s ties to this young New Orleans painter have grown even closer, thanks to a collaboration initiated by the curator

The World of William Joyce

From Shreveport to the Oscars and back again

Queen of Creole Cuisine

Nellie Murray was a celebrated chef in nineteenth-century New Orleans.

The Corps Takes the Teche

The Army Corp of Engineers, showboats, and the designing of a Louisiana waterway

A Mysterious Switch

An investigation of Louisiana’s change from counties to parishes

A New Orleans Griot Returns to Print

The Historic New Orleans Collection publishes new edition of Danny Barker’s autobiography

Arbitrary Process

The struggle for federal recognition continues for several of Louisiana's Indian tribes

Between the Studio and the Bulldozer

George Dunbar is a painter and sculptor, best known for his work in metal leaf, and clay. His work marries the stark geometry of modern art with lush, elemental materials, which call forth Louisiana's distinctive local landscape.

The Power of Soul

Remembering drummer Idris Muhammed’s versatile, funkified and oft-sampled body of work

Shopping Crossroads

As a major metropolis from the late 18th century to today, New Orleans has always had a strong tradition of retail activity

To the "Bead" of a Different Drum

From Nick Cave to the Creole Wild West, Shreveport embraces the art of beading

Profligate Beauty

An exhibition showcased Southern storytelling with over seventy pieces from the Ogden's permanent collection

The High Priestess of the French Quarter

Piecing together the life of Mary Oneida Toups, a legendary witch of the French Quarter

Living Laboratory

The staff at the National Audubon Society’s Paul J. Rainey Sanctuary in Vermilion Parish stand on the frontline of the battle for Louisiana’s coast.

Ignatius in the New New Orleans

Imagining “A Confederacy of Dunces” in 2016, and reexamining the motivations and misadventures of its protagonist. The final installment of our Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfire initiative.

Beneath New Orleans, A Coastal Barrier Island

Unbeknownst to most of the 165,000 people who live above it, a sandy atoll exists beneath greater New Orleans

A Dog's Life

Jerry Strahan isn't just the manager at Lucky Dogs – he's also the historian

An Ignatian Journey

Mistress of the Haunted House

Delphine Lalaurie was run out of New Orleans in 1834 when it was discovered she was torturing her slaves.

Filming Plaquemines

Nailah Jefferson directs first #CreateLouisiana-funded film

Banknote Bonanza

An exhibit surveys pre-Civil War currency in America with a special focus on Louisiana

The Power of the River

Australian artist Simon Gunning called New Orleans home and became fascinated with the power of the Mississippi

Phở Sure!

64 Parishes sat down with Chef Vũ of Ba Chi Canteen to discuss family and food

Seeing Nature

A NOMA exhibit explores the subject of landscape through an impressive range of styles and time periods from the 17th through 19th centuries in Europe

Saints Hit 50

A new exhibit in Natchitoches celebrates the team's history

A Final Album but No Swan Song

Lugger Culture

Distinctive sail boats once defined coastal Louisiana’s oyster trade

Seeds of a New Science

LSU’s hatchery is designed to produce around a billion larvae each year, which will grow into edible oysters

Shrimp Ambassadors

Over 10 million pounds of shrimp pass through their processing facilities each year, making Big Easy one of the leading shrimp processors in Louisiana

From Duba to Plaquemines

70 percent of oysters in America are reportedly sourced from the Gulf Coast, and it’s the state’s Croatian immigrants that Louisiana has to thank for its $317 million oyster industry

In the Mind of the Maker

Traditional Louisiana boat building practices offer insights for cognitive science

Echoes of Inner Conflict

Revisiting the complex history and populace sentiment of Robert Penn Warren's 1956 Segregation. The third in a series funded by the 2016 Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative.

Aaron Neville's My True Story

Mr. New Orleans: Pete Fountain

A Golden Pen

Sons of Winnfield

The Longs aren’t the only Winn Parish legends.

Homegrown Privileges Vanish in Exile

The Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum’s director of research reflects on the central themes in Wynton Marsalis’ 1997 "Blood on the Fields"

A Russian Enigma

Much of southern Louisiana and at least one other part of the world (no, not Russia) enjoy this unusual treat

Top Mob

Ogden Museum showcases the history of New Orleans graffiti

Family Business

Another generation of farmers brings Creole tomatoes to market

An Inventive, Inspired Inundation

Top of the Hill

Louisiana is the third lowest, third flattest state–and, topographically, among the most fascinating

Evangeline Downs

From bush tracks to bright lights in Acadiana

Scorchers, Wheelmen, and Flyers

The brief but significant life of Audubon Driving Park.

Darrell Bourque: An Amédé Ardoin Songbook

David Spielman

The 2016 Michael P. Smith Photographer of the Year

The Making, Unmaking, and Memory of White and Black Beaches in New Orleans

The long, winding history of racial segregation and inequality of access to Lake Pontchartrain's beaches.

The Irish of New Orleans

An excerpt from Laura D. Kelley's book.

The Room Must Evoke Some Ghosts

Writing after Tennessee Williams

Q&A: Beth Courtney

Excavating the Mysteries of Poverty Point

2016 Humanities Book of the Year features two distinctive voices

Tradition’s Unbroken Chain and Inevitable Evolution

Arpents, Ligas, and Acres

The cadastral system left cultural fingerprints on Louisiana's landscape

La Nueva Frontera: Oral Histories from the Latino Communities of Lafayette

A professor and her students record nearly 100 different oral histories of Latino immigrants living in the Lafayette area

Zachary Richard: Musician, Poet, and Statesman

The 2016 Humanist of the Year sits down with Michael Martin for an interview

The Rise of the Spaghetti District

Pasta’s remarkable arrival in New Orleans

Southern Journey

During the Civil Rights years, blacks had achieved the miraculous by kicking open the doors — but once inside, well, there was hardly anything there

Congo Square: La Place Publique

The African American culture nurtured in New Orleans’ Congo Square was, and is, unlike any other

On the Backstreets of Mardi Gras

A photo essay of Mardi Gras Indians from the Backstreet Museum’s founder, Sylvester Francis

From Tramps to Kings: Celebrating One Hundred Years of Zulu 1909-2009

Investments in Royal Vestments

The regalia of New Orleans’s Mardi Gras debutantes is inspired by the monarchs of Europe

Dance for a Chicken

Grown men chase chickens, cross dress and receive whippings at Prairie Cajun Mardi Gras gumbo runs. It’s all a part of springtime rituals traced back to medieval Europe

Contextual Portraits Mardi Gras Indians From An Insider's View

Long Live the King

King cakes usher in Carnival season

Jordan Noble: Drummer, Soldier, Statesman

The incredible life of a marching music pioneer

Soul of the South

An exhibition at the Louisiana State Museum reveals the boundless creativity and eccentricity of Southern artists.

Rhythm Revealers

Bloggers dig deep to preserve the unsung heroes of Louisiana music

Mardi Gras 1979

Photographer Rob McClaran documented Mardi Gras the year of the 1979 police strike

The King of Royal Street

W.G. Tebault and the poetry of furniture

10 Fascinating Facts About the Civil War in Louisiana

Elvis has not left the building

Clifton Chenier's Zydeco Road

Clifton Chenier’s path in the zydeco musician’s own words and those of his fellow travelers and bandmates

The Far-Reaching Legacy of Lead Belly

Voices of Ferriday

Louisiana Radio Stations and the (Inconvenient) Local Music Lacuna

Louisiana is the birthplace of several musical genres, but when locals turn their radios on, something very different is likely to come out

James Burton: Defining Rock and Roll Guitar

Legendary guitarist James Burton sits down for a chat with David Johnson

Sweet Crude’s Bilingual Ebullience

Sweet Crude, a New Orleans-based band, enjoys great popularity in cutting-edge Cajun and Francophone circles.

The Great Outdoors

Greek theaters and their modern offspring have been springing up across Louisiana

Hallelujah, Mahalia!

Buffalo Bill and the Mardi Gras Indians

The designation Mardi Gras Indian has become a mask in itself, spurring widespread confusion in outside communities about just who or what they are

Leadbelly

Hurry On Down

The musical career of Nellie Lutcher

Jimmie Davis: The Sunshine Governor

The Sicilian Jazzman

The Divine Call

Primitive Baptist Preachers of North Louisiana

KnowLouisiana Salutes Allen Toussaint

Yes He Can Can: Allen Toussaint perpetuates New Orleans’ unique musical style

Loaded Down with Iniquity

In 1866, six madams brought a crop of new talent back to New Orleans aboard the Evening Star, but the steamer never made it to its destination

An Interview with Governor Mike Foster

The former governor reflects on his time in office

“They Only Exist Within Us”

Three Louisiana political legends look back

Back to New Orleans

The Superdome: From Dream to Reality

In his new book, "Mayor Victor Schiro: New Orleans in Transition, 1961-1970," author Edward Haas examines Schiro’s role in the establishment of the Louisiana Superdome and the mayor’s negotiations with Governor John McKeithen, who championed the investment of state funds for the New Orleans stadium

Diary of a Displaced Person

A New Orleanian recalls days of trauma and disbelief in the days following Hurricane Katrina

“Neutral Ground”

Neutral ground, the New Orleans toponym used for street medians, is a phrase that originated in a territorial dispute in western Louisiana.

Violence, Vetoes and Votes

Victor Bussie and the battle over the right to work in Louisiana

Suddenly Less Summer

How air conditioning transformed the South

The Duke Dilemma

More than two decades after he ran for Louisiana governor, David Duke remains a thorny presence in state politics

The Curious Corners of Regional Identity

Bent, Not Broken

The Ogden Museum of Art showcases the photography, paintings, and drawings of Michael Meads.

Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics

A 1992 documentary puts the Bayou State's political circus in perspective

Is Tiger Stadium the Center of Louisiana?

Here's where you can find the center of balance around which the population of Louisiana is evenly distributed

The Battle of Liberty Place: A Matter of Historical Perception

Rebounding from Rita

Southwest Louisiana’s resilient spirit is stronger than the hurricane that laid waste to many of its communities

Taking a Stand

In 1972 protests broke out at Grambling and Southern universities among students who questioned the governance of these historically black colleges

Hell or High Water: How Cajun Fortitude Withstood Hurricanes Rita and Ike

We'll Keep Walking

The Baton Rouge Bus Boycott of 1953

Big Charity: The History of Charity Hospital

The Struggle for Equality in East Carroll Parish

A voting-rights activist tells his story of trial and triumph

Preparing for 2018

As New Orleans prepares to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding, geographer Richard Campanella looks back at the city's earlier commemorations

Preparing For 2018 by Revisiting 1968

Stars seemed to align for New Orleans’ 250th anniversary in 1968

The Sounds of CenLA

Its unique position between Acadiana and Anglo-rooted parishes to the north gives Central Louisiana a blend of traditional musical styles.

Preserving Louisiana’s Southern Forest Heritage

The boom and bust story of the Long Leaf sawmill

Feed The Soil: The Organic Reinvention of Inglewood Farm

Inglewood Farm in Alexandria is the largest organic operation in the state, but its history stretches back to the mid 1800s

MR-GO: A "Miracle" Mired in Controversy

Dug a half-century ago as a shortcut for oceangoing vessels, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet has become an environmental disaster

The Tidelands Dispute

Louisiana and the federal government have been engaged in a decades-long contentious debate over who shares royalty payments from the mineral-rich submerged lands of the Gulf of Mexico

Corps Craftsmanship

The Alexander State Forest Headquarters building is an important structure associated with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and a particularly fine example of the Corps’ accomplishments

When Humans Were Chattel

The Purchased Lives exhibition surveys the brutal business of the domestic slave trade and one of its biggest hubs, New Orleans

William Joyce: Guardian of Childhood

One of America's best illustrators delights children across the world from his studio in Shreveport

A Feminine Perspective

Louisiana boasts many 19th and 20th-century buildings influenced by women

Schools of Nursing

Buildings that served as training centers for nurses conveyed an impression of order and discipline

Nurturing the Drive-through Daiquiri

Drive-through daiquiris would not have been possible without the vigorous work of lobbyists and legislators

Daiquiri State of Mind

Mass-produced frozen daiquiris did not originate on Bourbon Street, but in a country store on the outskirts of Ruston

Homage to a Recording Engineer

How "Forward Thrust" Reshaped Southern Geography

Relocating a capital city or even government buildings can have dramatic effects on the surrounding area

An Interview with Laura Kelley

Lincoln in Louisiana

In 1828 and 1831, a young Abraham Lincoln would visit New Orleans by way of a flatboat journey down the Mississippi River. He was nearly killed on his first excursion.

"They Call Me Baby Doll"

The resurrection of a Mardi Gras tradition

The Nutria Nuisance

70 years ago no nutria existed in Louisiana; now there are several million

The LEH's home at Turners' Hall

Built in 1868 for the Society of Turners, a German benevolent association, Turners' Hall has been the home of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities since December 2000

Clearing the Red

Although it had been there for hundreds of years, Captain Henry Miller Shreve believed he could clear the Great Raft logjam

The Burning of Alexandria

In the final days of the Red River campaign, a mutinous band of Union soldiers carried out a senseless and devastating act

The Defeat of Fazendeville

The historically African American village of Fazendeville was destroyed to make room for a park devoted to the Battle of New Orleans

The Glorious Eighth of January

January 2015 marked the 200-year anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans

Remembering Andrew Jackson

An exhibition at HNOC coincides with the bicentennial of a landmark battle

A Dry Spell in a Wet Town

New Orleans resisted Prohibition nearly every step of the way

The Germans of New Orleans

German immigrants and their descendants were once a vibrant and visible part of New Orleans' cultural landscape

Question of Secession

When Lumber Was King

From 1900 to 1920, Louisiana was one of the nation’s top three lumber-producing states

Satchmo and the Jewish Family

Louis Armstrong never forgot the employers who nurtured him as a boy

Francophone Louisiana

Like most cultural aspects of the state, Francophone Louisiana is linguistically diverse

Alexandria’s Hotel Bentley

A Gilded Age hotel in Central Louisiana has a storied history

Tabasco

Edmund McIlhenny and the birth of a Louisiana pepper sauce

Remembering Robert Penn Warren

A Tribute to Jazz Historian Al Rose

“People always resisted the idea of having an idea.”

Streetcar Stories

New Orleans is the only city that never entirely lost a fleet of electric streetcars from the early modern era

The Autobiography of Ernest Gaines