Visiting Art Galleries in New Orleans

We spent the last week in New Orleans, there for my mother’s memorial service, family things, remembering, visiting, trying to absorb the facts that my mother is gone, the house I grew up in (essentially) sold, and the New Orleans family that was large and boisterous when I was growing up seems smaller, quieter and definitely scattered.

We did some wandering, too, to the old neighborhoods, the Lower Ninth Ward where my mother and her siblings grew up, the suburb I grew up in, the business district where my father had his business for so many years, and the French Quarter. We spent a few hours wandering through art galleries on Royal and Bienville streets.

Maison Royale, just across Royal Street from the Royal Orleans Hotel, was actually a combined jewelry store and art gallery. We wandered in, and quickly discovered that we could quite likely not afford even the cheapest item in the store. The clue for me was the first painting I saw, one by Maurice Utrillo from his “white period.” It was not a print or a copy. Next to it was a small painting by Toulouse-Lautrec. In the next room was a painting by Camille Pissarro. The Pissarro was listed for $2.7 million.

Not all of the galleries are in that bracket. We walked into the Vincent Mann Gallery on Royal Street and happened upon a story very close to my mother’s life.

The gallery has been operating since 1972 and specializes in French Neo- and Post-Impressionism. It’s owned by Jacob Vincent Manguno (the g is pronounced like a j), who for commercial reasons shortened his gallery’s name to Vincent Mann. He was born in 1925 in the Ninth Ward, lived on Caffin Avenue (where my mother’s church was), had boarded for a year at Holy Cross High School (a block from my mother’s house), lied about his age to join the military in World War II, and was a member of the Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force).

We learned all of this because we were taken with one of his own paintings, entitled “Duet” (pictured above), and discovered that the elderly man sitting at a desk and working on a computer was none other than the artist and gallery owner.

He was a delight to talk with.

He didn’t know my mother or her immediate family, but he was familiar with the family names of some of my aunts’ husbands. He told us stories about some of his adventures, about walking the Ninth Ward, living on Caffin Avenue, how so many German families lived in the area (my mother’s family was French on her father’s side and German on her mother’s).

After several emotional days with my mother’s service and burial, this was like opening a door on the New Orleans of her youth.

Painting: Duet by Jacob Vincent Manguno, casein on canvas, 2013. 

Sunday in the Quarter

The bacchanals of the night before

consigned to memory, someone else’s,

and it is sufficient to walk the streets

from Canal to Esplanade,

from Rampart to Decatur,

imagining, as I do, if I might meet

Faulkner as he leaves his apartment

on Pirate’s Alley, or Dreiser emerging

from a nearby alleyway, or Tennessee

with eyes older than his years walking

to his place on Dumaine. Perhaps

I should let some grizzled artist pay me

ten dollars to draw my picture, or sit

with the lady at the card table

with her Tarot cards as people stream

from the 11 a.m. mass at the cathedral.

Instead, it is sufficient to walk the streets

from Decatur to Rampart,

from Esplanade to Canal,

and catch the streetcar for home.

Photograph taken by Janet Young, October 2010.

French Quarter Roaming

While we were in New Orleans last week, we did some roaming through the French Quarter. The weather was fantastic – highs around 80, low humidity and sunshine – perfect for roaming.

We wandered around Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, walked up Royal Street (a pedestrian mall during the day), looked around some shops, and the walked back down Royal, where we were suddenly confronted by none other than the Lizard Lady (that’s what she called herself), a street performance artist who turned her Boom Box on and did odd, lizard-like movements while the music played (the music was odd and lizard-like, too).

Another block down Royal, we turned into Pirate’s Alley, where one of my favorite bookstores in the world is located – the Faulkner Book House, in the house known as the Faulkner House (where William Faulkner lived in New Orleans and where he wrote his first novel). Immediately after the picture below was taken, I slipped inside the shop (tiny by any comparison) and browsed the poetry section. Yes, I walked out with books of poems by Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, and a couple of others.

Walking alongside the cathedral toward Jackson Square, I looked up, and saw this view below. I thought of Claire Burge, the photography editor at the High Calling, and her conversation about the rule of thirds. Out came the trusty smart phone.

After coffee and doughnuts at Café Du Monde, and more shopping (more books!), we walked along the New Orleans riverfront where my wife was serenaded by an older man with a guitar and I made a $2 donation.

The French Quarter has changed over the years, but it’s always had lots of traffic around Café Du Monde on Decatur Street, artists hanging paintings on the fence around the square, tourists walking around looking like tourists, an always interesting collection of inhabitants, a highly tolerant attitude toward all kinds of behaviors (taken to extremes on Mardi Gras Day), and really fine restaurants mixed in among the really not-so-fine restaurants (and it can be hard to tell the difference until you eat the food). I had the BBQ shrimp in broth at Mr. B’s Bistro on Thursday night, and it was excellent.

What was personally encouraging was to see how crowded the Quarter was; the city is slowly but surely coming back after Hurricane Katrina. And in a city always ready to look for a new and insulting way to make a buck, I saw t-shirts for sale that read “BP – Big Polluter.” Yesterday, BP’s CEO reported that the damage reports from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill had been exaggerated by the media. He should have been with me at the Come Back Inn when my order-taker gave me a look of total disbelief when I asked if they had oyster po-boys. You can find oysters in the city, but you won’t find the large Gulf oysters. I’m sure their demise has been exaggerated, too.

You don’t find a lot of people who live elsewhere and are “from New Orleans.” Natives tend to stay. It’s the food, yes, but it’s also a lot of other things, mostly the people and how they hold both pessimism and optimism together in a creative tension. It’s the place I’ll always think of as my hometown, and there’s more of it in me than I’ve realized.