Blues and jazz music were born in the bayous of the Deep South and popularized in the northern states in a time of diffusion and innovation known as the Harlem Renaissance. Their journey has come full circle with “The Visual Blues,” the largest exhibit the LSU Museum of Art has ever created.
“The Visual Blues” opened at the gallery March 8 as an enormous exhibit dwarfed only by the legacy of the music itself. It showcases the rich history of the blues and jazz in a collection of 58 paintings, sculptures, illustrations and photographs that take audiences on a colorful journey from the origins of the blues’ arrival in Harlem in 1919 to its peak in the 1940s.
The exhibit distinguishes itself from other exhibits of its kind by giving special attention to the effect the music had on visual artists, according to Jordana Pomeroy, director of the museum.
“Because of Baton Rouge’s deep connection with the blues and Louisiana’s recognition as the birthplace of jazz, we felt that focusing on the musical aspects of this movement as depicted by the visual artists would be a fitting approach to the visual art of the Harlem Renaissance,” Pomeroy said.
Like the Renaissance of the 14th century, the Harlem Renaissance represented an intersection of cultures and a massive and long-lasting exchange of ideas between mostly black artists from the North and the South. Southern blues musicians accompanied jazz legends Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington in the thriving dance halls of New York City, and artists like Charles Alston and Jay Robinson sought to capture the electric energy of their performances on canvas.
The artists inspired the same thriving culture they set out to document, said Jeff English, the museum’s communications director.
“The artists show what that time was really like, and they might’ve called it ‘the blues,’ but most of the works are really vibrant and colorful, and the musicians were influenced by that art just as much as the artists were influenced by the musicians,” English said.
Many of the works on display at the exhibit lend themselves to the narrative of camaraderie and fellowship that accompanied the Harlem Renaissance. The paintings document celebrated performances in famous clubs like the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom, in which hundreds of poets, playwrights, singers, musicians, novelists and fans gathered to dance and make art as cultural icons like Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie made history on stage.
Likewise, the exhibit itself is a tribute to the continuing artistic interactions between the North and the South. The illustrations, writings and sculptures featured at the museum are loans from other cultural centers like the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the show will travel to other parts of the country once its run in Baton Rouge is complete.
In addition to its collection of paintings, the exhibit includes an array of iPads through which museum-goers can listen to the haunting melodies of Billie Holiday and the excited rhythms of other artists as they look at the art their songs inspired.
“The lines between visual art and music were blurred when Southern blues came to the North, and that’s what the Harlem Renaissance was all about,” English said.
The exhibit will be open in the Shaw Center for the Arts until July 13. Admission is free for all University faculty and students.
Pull Quote: “The lines between visual art and music were blurred when southern blues came to the north, and that’s what the Harlem Renaissance was all about.”

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