New Orleans During Prohibition Showcased
On March 1, the New Orleans Museum of Art opened a new decorative arts exhibition, Rebellious Spirits: Prohibition and Resistance in the South, showcasing the unique responses and approaches taken by Americans, particularly New Orleanians, after the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which banned alcohol in the country from 1920-1933.
"Art is a critically important lens to better understand our history," NOMA's Montine McDaniel Freeman Director Susan M. Taylor said. "This insightful exhibition brings a 13-year period of New Orleans—and American—history to life, and demonstrates how makers responded to their time through art and material culture."
The words "Prohibition" and "New Orleans" are naturally
opposed, which is what makes this exhibit so intriguing and at times cheeky,
offering yet more evidence that the City That Care Forgot often responds to
rules and regulations with revelry. For example, the display of an archival
letter issued by the U.S. government to the residents at 516 Bourbon St. as an
official warning to cease boozing it up, was, according to the exhibit
description, met with total disregard by its recipients—as were the six other
letters mailed to the same address over the course of several years during
Prohibition, threatening property removal and incarceration if they continued
partying. Their les le bon temps rouler attitude resulted in nothing
from the feds.
It is these types of documents, some on loan from the
Historic New Orleans Collection and the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, that add illuminating
narratives to the decorative art pieces. Together, they tell a story of New
Orleans that most of us have not seen or heard, such as the display of a temperance
medal that citizens wore to alert others that they were serious about their
non-imbibing. Images of Storyville are accompanied by an explanation of how temperance
proponents turned a blind eye, considering it a confined area where vices were
allowed to exist, while others saw it as the obvious arch-enemy of temperance,
calling for its removal as part and parcel of Prohibition.
The exhibition is organized by Decorative Arts Trust
Curatorial Fellow Laura Ochoa Rincon, who is currently completing a two-year
fellowship at the museum. Ochoa Rincon's research interests center around the
intersection of foodways, race, class, and immigration—and the relationship
between material culture and life in the Americas. Ochoa Rincon holds a
master's degree from the University of Delaware's renowned Winterthur Program
in American Material Culture and a BA from New York University. The exhibit was
partly inspired by a PBS documentary she saw about the temperance movement that
noted how easy it was to find alcohol in the Big Easy at that time.
"New Orleans is an American epicenter for drinking culture and was even before Prohibition. The unique social, political, racial, and economic backgrounds of New Orleanians and people in the American South led to various ingenious methods of skirting the law. Alcohol consumption connected all walks of life during the era of Prohibition," Ochoa Rincon said. "This exhibition tells those diverse stories through objects that carry the voices of a rebellious society, determined to take freedom into their own hands."
Connections from this exhibit's examples of creative adaptability can be made to today's world. The growing mocktails movement—born not from law but from a growing health-conscious and sobering culture—is echoed in the Prohibition era's "near beer" and other clever drinks invented to offer substitute social lubricants. The prescriptions for "medicinal whiskey" (with instructions to take one spoonful per hour) are reminiscent of modern-day medicinal marijuana prescriptions.
Many objects selected for this exhibit from NOMA's Decorative Arts Collection are on public display for the first time, selected by Ochoa Rincon for their artistry as much as for their ability to illustrate how drinking culture evolved and adapted to the socio-political landscape, from the size and shape of glasses to the creation of cocktail shakers with built-in recipes designed to "make homemade bathtub gin taste better."
The exhibit is on display within the Decorative Arts
gallery at NOMA through January 2025.
