Events

A Day at Poverty Point: Revisited X

A Day at Poverty Point: Revisited

September 28, 2025 - February 28, 2026

Day At Poverty Point: Revisited showcases select works of six Louisiana-based photographers who, on September 10, 1993, set out in the early morning to document a day in the life of East Carroll, West Carroll, and Richland Parishes until sundown. Guided by local officials, clergy, and community volunteers, the photographers recorded what they encountered in both images and field notes: accounts of hardship and neglect, but also of faith, labor, and community.

Background and Purpose

This project was originally intended to support a $40-million Empowerment Grant. The photographs were created to highlight the dire conditions of the region, where most residents lived without indoor plumbing, reliable kitchens, or even doors to their homes. Although the parishes did not receive the Empowerment Grant, the photographers, working in collaboration with Dr. Michael Luster (former executive director of the Louisiana Folklife Festival) and the 2003 staff of the Masur Museum, chose to document the day for exhibition purposes.

Exhibition Goals

Two decades later, the rates of poverty and unemployment in these parishes are still among the highest in the nation. We revisit this exhibition not to solicit sympathy, but to insist on attention, and to ask what action follows from looking. The Masur Museum is committed to connecting this history with the present. As the exhibition travels, we are developing ways for it to serve as a fundraiser, with proceeds directed to programs addressing urgent needs in the very parishes it depicts. Whether through food security, housing, education, or cultural resources, our aim is that this project not only documents conditions of poverty, but also contributes to their alleviation.

Supporting the Cause

Visitors are encouraged to support East Carroll directly by donating to Together for Hope Louisiana with the QR code below. Together for Hope seeks to contribute to poverty alleviation through community engagement and resource allocation.

This project underscores the museum’s commitment to using art as a catalyst for social change, encouraging viewers to not only witness but also act upon the issues depicted.

Photographers

Camille Jungman

A self-taught photographer, mixed-media artist, and retired art instructor who recently relocated from Monroe. Her travel photography was acquired to Masur’s permanent collection in 2001. Her work has been featured in more than 30 state, regional, and juried competitions since 1980.

Chandra McCormick

New Orleans-based photographer known for collaborative work with her husband, Keith Calhoun. Together, they specialize in documenting African-American communities in New Orleans. In 1980, they began the long-term series Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex, a photographic testimony to the exploitation of inmates under the 1865 13th-Amendment loophole, which continues today.

Deborah Luster

Photographer from Northwestern Arkansas whose work is held in major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and SF MOMA. Her 1998 collaboration with poet C.D. Wright, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, combines image and text to document prison-made objects, tools, and portraits of incarcerated people across Louisiana.

Jeannie Frey Rhodes

Baton Rouge–based portrait and black-and-white documentary photographer. She is best known for A Sense of Green: A City’s Changing Texture, an interpretive photography book and exhibition on the history of Baton Rouge’s urban forest.

Kevin Kennedy

Shreveport-based photographer and educator. He taught photography at Louisiana Tech University (1994–2012), served as a Visiting Lecturer at Centenary College of Louisiana (2016–2019), and was a Visual Art Instructor for the Caddo Parish School Board until 2020.

Lee Estes

Monroe-based photographer (b. 1927), best known for his precise black-and-white documentation of architecture. His published works include Fading Textures (2000), a project begun in 1957 featuring imagery of Northeast Louisiana, and Fading Warriors (2005), which profiles interviews and photographs of 47 World War II veterans.
Permanent Collection X

Permanent Collection

Permanent Display

The Masur Museum of Art has been building its collection since its opening in 1963. Our first acquisition came a year later, when a work by Ida Kohlmeyer, then a regional artist and now celebrated nationally, was purchased after her submission to the museum’s inaugural Juried Competition. Kohlmeyer, who trained under Mark Rothko and worked in the lineage of Abstract Expressionism, set an early precedent for the collection’s balance of regional and international relevance. Over the decades, generous gifts, estate donations, and acquisitions from our annual Juried Competition tradition have brought the museum works by world-renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Robert Motherwell, Auguste Rodin, and Käthe Kollwitz. Alongside these canonical figures, the museum also highlights significant American voices including Thomas Hart Benton, Fairfield Porter, and Leon Golub. Equally vital are the Louisiana artists whose work bridges local identity with national recognition: Lynda Benglis, George Rodrigue, George Dunbar, and Kohlmeyer among them. Together, these holdings reflect the museum’s commitment to situating regional art within a broader national and international conversation.
Invocations: Selections from the Permanent Collection X

Invocations: Selections from the Permanent Collection

November 20, 2025 - February 6, 2026

Curated from our permanent collection, Invocations is an inquiry into embodiment, whether within a body, a building, or a spiritual space. Ida Kohlmeyer’s Immanence, the first work Masur acquired in 1963, defines this inquiry by both title and imagery. “Immanence” is defined as the state of being inherent or dwelling within something. In religious terms, it often is used to describe God’s presence in the world as an “indwelling,” rather than separation from it. Kohlmeyer depicts this state of “indwelling” as an architectural grid of four endarkened squares, reminiscent of an abstracted window-pane at night, framed in space by an off-white wall. Light streaks of blue at the top of the grid hint at an unseen presence. Other works on display, such as Untitled (Man Sitting on Fence), Ritual Awakening, Internal Trials No. 2 & No.19, feature photographed figures who are hidden, turned away, or washed out by over-exposure, creating a sense of uncertainty or strangeness in how the body appears. Additional pieces focus on the ruins of sacred architectural sites, shots of the natural sky, and religious imagery. Using collage, oil paint, and photography, these works consider what it means to inhabit a structure, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Finally, the curator presents each gallery with personal invocations captured from field notes, inviting viewers to pause and consider their own presence within space and time.