art review: Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art

Various exhibits from 'Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at The New Orleans Museum Art', at NOMA to February 10th, 2025 (photos: NOMA)

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​Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at The New Orleans Museum of Art 
Review by Jamie Chiarello

As a street artist who is used to sitting out in the quarter hawking my paintings, a museum is a very special and particular type of place to me. On one hand, it is easy to eschew most establishments, to question whether art should be sought in a museum anymore than learning in school or God in a church.

On the other hand, I will always remember one of my formative museum experiences where I entered with a big chip on my shoulder about the stupid masses who didn't care for anything I cared for and then looked around me and was dumbstruck by the symbolism of a museum in itself; a building where people who deeply care about art house it, and work tirelessly to preserve it for future generations. 

I didn't have any particular expectations upon entering the NOMA to see the show 'Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art'. The main question I have been asking myself when experiencing art is: What is my initial direct visceral experience? How do I make sense of this? How is this affected by any subsequent explanation about the work before me?

The curation of this collection is extraordinary. Upon entering, we are immediately confronted by an enormous, pitch-black chandellier by Fred Wilson. Stepping closer, I was both in awe of the intiricacy and skill in handling such a delicate material, and mildy repulsed in a pleasurable way by the slick blackness of the material that reminded me of both oil and H.R. Giger.

Seeing the chandellier at eye level evoked a theme that reoccured over and over through out the show: Who made these works? For whom? Fred Wilson's piece both asks and answers this question, and it is worth going to see the show for this piece alone.

From there, we are shown glass works from antiquity, mostly from the Middle East and the Roman empire. You can't help but wonder, what lives did these objects live in their own times? Will our old junk bottles one day be in museums to be ogled over and speculated upon? It is impossible to study any art or material development divorced from the brutality of human history.

The beautiful shining crystal banana and sugar bowls only silently nod to the slave labor and the historical exploitation of local communities employed to obtain such luxuries. Looking at the work from the Venetian Island of Murano we are asked questions of labor, skill, beauty and alchemy. A room exploring glass bead work, and displaying a Black Masking Indian suit by Big Chief Down M. Edwards of the Timbuktu Warriors is a striking local feature.

Leading into the modern and contemporary realms, the intent seems to shift to become more about provocation. There is a show of 3D printing and vases, and I want to loop back around to the start of the show, though this is more so a reflection on my own tastes and interests. 

​At large, the show is incredibly engaging, and very well organized. Like glass, our perceptions of ourselves and historical markers have tendencies toward warping and are strangely fragile and enduring. Go to City Park, go to the museum: this is a worthwhile way to ponder and pass time in the Anthropocene. 

The Sand, Ash, Heat: Glass at the New Orleans Museum of Art runs at NOMA through February 10th, 2025. More information here.