American Art Awards Names Best Gallery Or Museum In Louisiana: Arthur Roger Gallery
Each year the American Art Awards selects the 20 Best Galleries And Museums In America; only one museum or gallery per state per year. Among other criteria, selections are based on years established, industry reputation, online buzz, location, size, socially relevant exhibits, motivational and educational programs, represented artists as well as artist, client and visitor references.
American Art Awards: “We considered thousands of the most established art venues from Hawaii to Maine. This year we chose five museums, one with an impeccable reputation for 125 years, one 80, one 50, one 40, and one fairly new. We selected a Mid-West art center doing important community work for 44 years, and a lively Southern gallery linked to a 5 day festival. Most the galleries we selected are heralded longtime landmarks with expansive interiors perfect for exhibiting today’s contemporary masters. Many have several locations and cater specifically to regional collectors with regional artwork, but just as many represent all genres of work from all levels of national and international artisans.
“The American Art Awards selects Arthur Roger Gallery the Best Gallery or Museum in Louisiana, 2020, and one of the 20 Best Galleries and Museums in America, 2020. For 45 years they have been nationally recognized as one of the foremost contemporary galleries in New Orleans’ Arts District, offering treasures in sculpture and paint as well as iconic photography. The three locations exhibit breakthrough and prominent artists and assemble major corporate collections as well as present innovative panel discussions exploring regionalism, video works, Post-Pop Postmodernism, Art Industries, race and identity, and other topical issues.”
MORE ABOUT THE GALLERY:
In 1978 Arthur Roger opened his gallery at 3005 Magazine Street in New Orleans’ Garden District. A year earlier, the Contemporary Arts Center had opened in downtown New Orleans and the art scene in the city was beginning to burgeon. The Arthur Roger Gallery moved to the forefront of galleries in the city. Early on the gallery attracted a number of New Orleans’ most prominent artists including Robert Gordy and Ida Kohlmeyer.
As interest grew rapidly in the Uptown galleries, Arthur Roger played a leading role in forming the New Orleans Gallery Association (now called the Arts District of New Orleans) and in arranging remarkably successful coordinated exhibition openings such as Art For Art’s Sake which would transform the art scene in New Orleans. In the early 80s, the gallery was selected to assist in assembling several major corporate collections including the InterContinental Hotel in New Orleans with designer Angelo Donghia, the Pan-American Life Insurance Company with architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and the Riverfront Aquarium of the Americas.
By 1984 the gallery was gaining national recognition and was selected for participation in the first modern art fair in North America, the Chicago International Art Exposition (now called EXPO Chicago), where it continued to exhibit for many years. The gallery has also later participated in art fairs in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, the Hamptons, and Seattle.
The Arthur Roger Gallery also played a central role in arranging the large Louisiana Arts Exhibition at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans, which was regarded as one of the most successful exhibits at the Exposition.
In 1985 the Arthur Roger Gallery presented a successful month-long group show in New York at the Exhibition Space at 112 Greene St. in SoHo. The gallery hosted shows curated by “Pattern and Decoration” by Ronny Cohen and “Works from Emmerich Gallery” organized by Nathan Kolodner. That noteworthy exhibition included original works by David Hockney, Hans Hoffman, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Motherwell.
In 1988 the Arthur Roger Gallery moved to a new carefully planned space with three separate exhibition areas in the historic Warehouse District in downtown New Orleans. The interior, designed by architect Wellington “Duke” Reiter, was described by the Times-Picayune art critic as “establishing a world-class standard of excellence for new art galleries in New Orleans.” A tribute to the new gallery was published in Architecture and received an Alpha Group Award for excellence in interior design.
In late summer 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated enormous areas in New Orleans, the Arts District and the gallery were largely spared. Many gallery artists, however, had overwhelming losses both to their homes and to their work. The gallery lost its offsite gallery storage facility and decided to acquire the adjacent building at 434 Julia initially to accommodate gallery artwork storage and restoration. Eventually, StudioWTA architects Wayne Troyer and Tracie Asche were hired to design the 434 space to connect with the existing gallery at 432 Julia St. and so expanding the gallery from 5,100 square feet to 7,500 square feet. The renovation received three AIA design awards in 2009 and 2010.
In 2017, in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the gallery, Arthur Roger gifted his entire personal art collection, comprised of artwork from 1970 to today, to the New Orleans Museum of Art. Susan Taylor, the director of NOMA, called the gift “transformative” and featured the works in a major exhibition “Pride of Place: the Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans.”
Arthur Roger has served on numerous boards including The Contemporary Arts Center, The Ogden Museum of Contemporary Art, The Mayor’s Art Commission, The Louisiana Children’s Museum, Halloween in New Orleans, United Services for AIDS, NO/AIDS Task Force, The Human Rights Campaign and The Greater New Orleans Foundation. He received the Young Leadership Award in 1994, Junior Achievement Role Model in 2009, the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Award in 2016 and The Anti-Defamation League’s A.I. Botnick Torch of Liberty Award in 2017.
UPCOMING EVENTS: Please contact the gallery for the latest info.
Contact: info@arthurrogergallery.com
Web Site: http://arthurrogergallery.com/
Addresses:
Arthur Roger Gallery / 432 Julia Street / New Orleans, LA 70130 / 504.522.1999
Arthur Roger@434 / 434 Julia Street / New Orleans, LA 70130 / 504.522.1999
Arthur Roger Gallery Framing / 820 Commerce Street / New Orleans, LA 70130 / 504. 528.2609
www.AmericanArtAwards.com annually awards 20 museums and galleries in spring, and with their critique in autumn, awards 300+ artists (painters, photographers, sculptors and digital artists).
