New Orleans iCARNAVAL! recreates carnival experience
New Orleanians can celebrate Mardi Gras early this year at the New Orleans Museum of Art when the multimedia exhibition, ¡CARNAVAL!, opens to the public on October 21, 2006. Visitors will experience the sights, sounds and pageantry of Carnival celebrations around the world today. The exhibition, on loan from the Museum of International Folk Art, transports viewers to eight rural and urban locations in Europe and the Americas where Carnival is among the most important occasions of the year: Venice, Italy; Laza, Spain; Basel, Switzerland; Tlaxcala, Mexico; Recife/Olinda, Brazil; Oruro, Bolivia; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and New Orleans, U.S.A.
iCARNAVAL! explores the frivolity, fantasy and festivity of modern-day Carnival celebrations in places where the Carnival spirit is deeply rooted in cultural history, tradition and identity. Combining 49 colorful costumes with 15 short video programs and 80 large-scale photo murals shot on location, the exhibition re-creates the Carnival experience as viewers are immersed in an atmosphere of motion, color, music and sound.
“This exhibition is a perfect fit for New Orleans, particularly because it is the only American city featured in this celebration of Carnivals from around the world,” says William Fagaly, Curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. “I believe that New Orleanians are going to be enthralled with how other people in Europe and South America present their own cultures, and I think they also will be proud of how our city is represented in this worldwide exhibition.”
The show’s global nature is reflected in its design. Each Carnival site is presented as its own section, featuring articulated mannequins in costumes that portray the community’s cultural history and the vibrancy of the celebration today. The mannequins stand before photo-mural backdrops that capture the cityscapes and rural environs of the sites. Video monitors complete the picture with two video programs per section that bring the drama of Carnival to life.
“The exhibition provides a realistic window into places where Carnival is an important part of community life,” says Barbara Mauldin, Project Director for the Museum of International Folk Art. “In exploring common themes among the sites, as well as distinct cultural and regional differences, ¡CARNAVAL! builds bridges between diverse populations of the world.”
¡CARNAVAL! was organized by the Museum of International Folk Art in collaboration with the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Major funding has been provided by the National Endowment for Humanities, the International Folk Art Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Neutrogena Corporation, and The Museum of New Mexico Foundation.
For information about ¡CARNAVAL!, visit www.noma.org
Chitra Mogul
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