Get familiar with Newcomb Art Museum on guided tour

On the second Saturday of every month, Newcomb Art Museum staff usually offer a guided tour of the latest exhibit. This weekend, the tour will take a unique turn as artists from the local artist collective Painters Painting Painters lead visitors through Newcomb’s current exhibition, “Unfamiliar Again: Contemporary Women Abstractionists.” During the tour, the artists will share their personal, creative outlook on the exhibit.

“This tour is a chance not only to get an inside look at “Unfamiliar Again,” but to see it through the eyes of local artists and learn how it inspires the local art scene,” said Tom Friel, coordinator for interpretation and public engagement for the Newcomb Art Museum.

The artists involved in Painters Painting Painters meet monthly to challenge their painting practices through the creation of portraits. The group is composed of 10 New Orleans painters – each with a distinct artistic style and an established studio practice.

Leading Saturday’s tour will be artists Jeremy Jones and Patch Somerville along with Tulane assistant professor of painting and drawing Aaron Collier.

Unfamiliar Again” adds to a national conversation, started when shows featuring female artists began popping up around the country in 2016.

The seven artists in the show explore new ways of abstraction based on experimental, process-oriented methods. Intended to defamiliarize common imagery, their works preclude figurative recognition or easy comprehension.

Utilizing methods that are nuanced, time-intensive and often drawn from unlikely modernized sources, including do-it-yourself videos on YouTube, Photoshop errors, digital distortions, smartphone apps and manipulated or synthetic materials, these works exist in a moment all their own.

The tour is open to the public and takes place on Saturday, Nov. 11, at noon.

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