John B. Harter Foundation: Tigers in the Garden
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
Trenity Thomas, Is He a Fairy? No, He's a Dragonfly, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas
John B. Harter Foundation: Tigers in the Garden
Tigers in the Garden brings together a dynamic group of emerging and established LGBTQ+ artists working across New Orleans, presenting a vivid portrait of a cultural landscape where identity, performance, and place are inseparable. The exhibition is curated by Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
The exhibition opens Saturday, June 13, 2025, with a public reception from 6–9 PM. A preview reception will take place Thursday, April 11, from 5–8 PM. Both events coincide with Pride New Orleans, situating the exhibition within a broader moment of visibility and celebration.
The exhibition features work by John Burton Harter, Matthew Draughter, André Hubbard, Marta Rodriguez Maleck, Michael Meads, Jacob Reptile, Maxx Sizeler, Cars Stewart, Goldie Ray Sylvan, Trenity Thomas, Meg Turner, and Kyle Young.
At its core, Tigers in the Garden positions New Orleans itself as both sanctuary and stage—a place where cultivated surfaces and untamed realities exist side by side. As described in the exhibition text, the city becomes “a lush, unruly garden where identities are cultivated, performed, and continuously reimagined,” and where artists move with “a kind of feral intelligence—improvisational, self-possessed, and unafraid.”
The title draws from the 1950 novel Tiger in the Garden by Speed Lamkin, a work that explored class tension, social change, and one of the earliest candid depictions of gay life in the twentieth-century South. In Lamkin’s narrative, the “tiger” emerges as a disruptive force within the rigid structures of Southern society—an apt metaphor for the artists in this exhibition, whose practices challenge inherited norms while embracing visibility, sensuality, and self-definition.
This exhibition extends that metaphor into the present. Where earlier generations navigated coded or constrained identities, the artists in Tigers in the Garden assert presence openly. Their works collapse distinctions between private and public life, ornament and instinct, control and abandon—reflecting a city long defined by its ability to hold contradiction.
Tigers in the Garden is sponsored by the John Burton Harter Foundation, whose mission is to advance awareness of visual and queer art through the legacy of its namesake. Harter’s own prolific practice—comprising more than 3,000 works, many centered on the male figure—helped document and preserve the richness of queer experience in New Orleans, often outside mainstream recognition.
In this context, the exhibition operates not only as a presentation of contemporary work but as part of a broader lineage. It traces a movement from coded representation to unapologetic visibility, from marginal narratives to embodied presence. As the exhibition text concludes, in New Orleans, “the garden has not been tamed—it has simply learned to hold and celebrate its tigers.”
Event Details:
Preview Reception: Thursday, June 11, 2026 | 5–8 PM
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 13, 2026 | 6–9 PM
Location: UNO St. Claude Gallery
Exhibition Dates: June 13 through July 12.
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 13, 2026 | 6–9 PM
Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12-5 or by appointment
UNO St. Claude Gallery | 2429 St. Claude Avenue
Press Contact: Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection, Ogden Museum of Southern Art bsumrall@ogdenmuseum.org
Michael Meads, Study for Saint George, II, 2014, Sumi Ink on Paper
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