Museums for Taylor Swift and the Swifties in NOLA | Entertainment/Life

Starting Friday (October 25), all eyes in New Orleans will be on Taylor Swift as she begins her series of three highly anticipated concerts at the Superdome. But is it possible that the superstar’s eye is set on some of the Crescent City’s cultural gems between mega-events?

Here’s my Taylor Swift article about local museums and even specific exhibits that Ms. Swift should visit during her downtime over the next few days. If you visit Swifties, be sure to bookmark it too.

Disclosure: Since I’m not a real Bill Belichick guy, I don’t know Swift’s songs well enough to fill them with a ton of clever references to the lyrics, so it’ll be about 750 words without my unintentionally remembering anything slipped. Also important: Some of these exhibitions and museums not only offer an easy-to-understand introduction to excerpts from the city’s history and culture and its many topics, but are also selfie-ready. Some are not. You will know which are which.

What to see, where to go

The exhibitions “Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond” and “Mardi Gras: It’s Carnival Season in Louisiana” at the Presbytère — The Katrina exhibit provides a comprehensive overview of the storm as we still call it, as well as a comprehensive lesson in levee engineering, which is why there is a museum exhibit on Hurricane Katrina. The carnival exhibition offers an extended excursion into our annual street and ballroom celebration with fake kings, pearl necklaces, high school marching bands and, of course, alcohol. For most of us, it’s a weekday family picnic with costumes.

The Backstreet Cultural Museum – Choose the pretty, stay and immerse yourself in the neighborhood-centric traditions of the Black Masking (or Mardi Gras) Indians and the second-tier rites of welfare and pleasure clubs.

The ““A Vanishing Bounty: Louisiana’s Coastal Environment and Culture” exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection – A clear introduction to our natural resources and the dangers to which they and we are exposed. (Visit the blog at themuseumgoer.com for a deeper journey into the exhibition’s main object, a rare second edition of John James Audubon’s double elephant folio, “The Birds of America.”)

The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden — The New Orleans Museum of Art’s large and growing outdoor art experience is likely to be the focus of Selfie Central for the next few weeks.

The exhibition “Drumsville: Evolution of the New Orleans Beat” at the New Orleans Jazz Museum — This museum has a lot to learn about New Orleans’ native music, from Congo Square to Louis Armstrong to the present. In “Drumsville,” however, you see a photo of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts enjoying this very exhibition, providing an admirable example of the off-day cultural curiosity of a touring rock star.

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum — Here’s your informative meal of local cuisine and cocktails, where you’ll learn how Popeyes conquered the world.

The National Museum of the Second World War — An obvious recommendation for several reasons. First, Beyoncé visited once; She posted pretending to be Rosie the Riveter. Second, Taylor Swift’s 2020 song “Epiphany” was partly a tribute to Archie Dean Swift, her grandfather who served in the Pacific during World War II. Third, it allows me to tell one of my favorite stories about touring music stars who visit our local cultural institutions. (It’s been a while, but this is how I remember it. Quotes are paraphrased and I forgive any embellishments.)

I was working on doing my job with precision and efficiency, as is customary in the communications department at this museum, when one of my much younger colleagues (as they all were) approached me hesitantly. One of the Rolling Stones had just shown up downstairs and wanted to check out the museum, she said. None of us know who any of them are. Can you go down and try to be helpful? This was plausible in July 2019 when the Stones were in town to play the (then) Mercedes-Benz Superdome, a concert postponed by a day due to Hurricane Barry, and likely had time.

By the time I made it to the ticket booth, Rolling Stone and his group had already made their way into the massive museum. On the way to the galleries I met Rob Citino, a brilliant graduate student. Historian and author as well as rock ‘n’ roll guitarist. “One of the Rolling Stones is in the building,” I said to Rob. Let’s work together to find him. You take the European Theater and I’ll take the Pacific and we’ll meet at the metaphorical VJ Day. We did it. No stone. So we headed to the US Freedom Pavilion, where there is a spectacular display of World War II-era warbirds. And on the way there we found our Rolling Stone having tea outside the American Sector restaurant, which made perfect sense since it was about 4 p.m

And that’s how Rob and I met Charlie Watts.