Tulane Homecoming 2018

SEAA had special Tulane Homecoming hours this past Saturday for our current exhibit, "The Laurel Valley Plantation Photographs of Philip M. Denman." Visitors included Hortensia Calvo, Director of the Latin American Library at Tulane, accompanied by Penny and James Morrill. Penny is a leading scholar of artist William Spratling, and has written extensively about him and his involvement in the Taxco silver renaissance in Mexico. Spratling also taught drawing in the Tulane School of Architecture in the 1920s. We gave them a tour of the Laurel Valley exhibit, and also showed them beautiful gouache, ink wash, and watercolor drawings done by Tulane architecture students in the 1920s and 1930s, including, at left, this ink and watercolor on illustration board proposal for a plot plan for Tulane University from 1932 by New Orleans architects Moise H. Goldstein and Nathaniel Cortlandt Curtis, Sr., and drawn by Tulane students Samuel Wilson, Jr. and Earl Mathes.

We also welcomed Roland and Frances Bourgeois and family. Mr. and Mrs. Bourgeois own the property next to Laurel Valley Plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and came into New Orleans for the chance to see Philip Denman's beautiful images covering nearly 40 years of history of the largest extant sugar plantation in Louisiana and, in its day, one of the largest in the southern United States. Mr. Bourgeois regaled us with wonderful stories of life growing up on a Louisiana plantation.