It is often and correctly noted that New
Orleans is the most African city in America.
The reference is not just that the majority
population is African American, but rather it
is mainly about the profound infl uences that
population has contributed to the fabric of
the city. The ancestral memory of Africa as the
Motherland has spilled over into the music,
food, dance, art, religion, funeral rituals, and
much more.
How can the city that is called the Cradle
of Jazz, bore a son named Louis Armstrong,
and taught us to love the abstraction of jazz
not fall in love with the abstraction of African
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FIG. 1 (bottom left): Seated
male fi gure.
Baule; Côte d’Ivoire.
Wood. H: 48.3 cm.
Diana and J. Thomas Lewis Collection.
FIG. 2 (below): Seated
maternity fi gure.
Yombe; DR Congo or
Angola.
Wood. H: 24.1 cm.
Diana and J. Thomas Lewis Collection.
FIG. 3 (right): Tom Lewis,
New Orleans, 2018.
All photos: Charles Davis.
FIG. 4 (below right):
Matched group of three
female ibejis.
Awori, Yoruba; Oto, Nigeria.
Wood, glass beads, fi ber. H: 17.8 cm
(tallest).
Diana and J. Thomas Lewis Collection.
TRIBAL people
TOM LEWIS
African Art in the Crescent City
art? It did indeed fall in love, but that’s not
a fact that’s well known to the wider world.
Our museum began collecting African art in
the 1960s and soon hired Bill Fagaly to curate
a growing collection that included a major gift
by Victor Kiam. Davis Gallery opened there in
the early 1970s, and in the 1990s the important
Frère Cornet Archive was gifted to Loyola
University. Four local universities now have
African Studies programs. The New Orleans
Museum of Art and Tulane University have
done four publications on local collections,
and over the last half century the museum
has developed one of the best African art
Interview by Charles Davis