Collection Highlights

His party pics captured the New Orleans music scene when Cash Money Records and New Orleans rap were on the precipice of worldwide fame.

Three large-format poems represent some of the earliest published works of the “Black American Rimbaud.”

A collection of prints by Jacqueline Bishop and Douglas Bourgeois, donated by art publisher Zanatta Editions, probes the complex relationship between humans and the natural environment.

Working on a black Remington, Williams wrote his masterpiece in a French Quarter apartment near the Desire streetcar line. 

Smith documented the music, parading, and Black folk traditions of New Orleans for decades.

Ory and his trombone helped shape jazz from the 1920s onward. His papers include photographs, correspondence, sheet music, instruments, and more.

John James Audubon’s masterpiece of naturalist art is on display in a double-elephant folio as part of HNOC’s ongoing exhibition A Vanishing Bounty.

The New Orleans percussionist's audio and video tape collection documents his decades-long career, his musical influences, landmark events in the city, and his family and daily life.

HNOC expands its LGBTQ+ holdings with the papers of a nightlife fixture who chronicled the Quarter’s denizens.