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The Orleans Gallery: 65 Years Later
New Orleans was where I discovered my passion for archives. I took a job working for Amanda Winstead, an art appraiser and dealer located in Uptown. My job mostly involved market data research and artwork comps for appraisals, but occasionally it would involve deep dives into a specific artist or in this case a gallery. Amanda had the idea to curate a show center around the Orleans Gallery during Covid and hired me to provide the art historical research. I expanded on oral histories from the surviving artists and family members, research from various special collections around New Orleans, and my own archival work with the Jim Steg estate.

 

The Orleans Gallery opened April 1956 at 527 Royal Street in the French Quarter and became the center of the contemporary art world in New Orleans until its closure in early 1973. Founded by seven artists including Robert Helmer, Shearly Grode, George Dunbar, Lin Emery, Jack Hastings, Jean Seidenberg, and James Lamantia, the gallery was run as an artist cooperative, a cutting-edge concept at the time. These artists sought a forum where they could openly share their ideas and exhibit their art based mainly in abstraction and the New York school which was not readily accepted in New Orleans.





In 1958, they showed over eighty works by twelve artists from the Orleans Gallery at the Riverside Museum in New York City at an exhibition entitled, “NOW in New Orleans.” The exhibition received much critical praise and positive reviews, reinforcing the artistic ideals of the founding members. By 1960, the Orleans Gallery was established and successful in New Orleans, allowing a true contemporary art scene to thrive in the city and paving the foundation for the robust gallery and art scene of today.

I imagine that our individual styles would not differ much if we had never met, but I’m sure that we all found our identities faster by being together.

-Lin Emery¹⁰

In the true meaning of cooperative, the artists of the Orleans Gallery supported and encouraged each other. It is interesting to see how certain media, specifically the use of silver and gold leaf, were used by several of the artists, such as Helmer, Grode, and Conrad. Several artists from the Orleans Gallery went on to become quite well known in the bigger circles and around the South.

After almost two decades, the Orleans Gallery had run its course and closed in 1973 citing rising rent, inner gallery turmoil, and competition from commercial galleries where artists started showing. The legacy of 527 Royal Street and the Orleans Gallery still lives on in the art scene of the quarter, now housing the Historic New Orleans Collection.


8.Cover image from catalogue:
Jim Steg
The Cast, 1968
Flocked serigraph
Edition 1/6
22 1/2 x 31 inches
9.Artist portraits taken from the first Orleans Gallery publication introducing the new gallery. Digitzed file take from the Jim Steg Estate.
10.
Platou, Dode, et. al. Orleans Gallery: The Founders. The Historic New
Orleans Collection: New Orleans, 1982.

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