New Orleans has a wonderful rediscovery on view this fall. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art presents In the Eyes and Mind of the Feral Child: The Art of Tom McNease, running September 12, 2026 through March 14, 2027 — a joyful chance to meet an artist who made extraordinary work far from any spotlight.
McNease, born in Meridian, Mississippi, studied zoology and briefly taught science before teaching himself photography and darkroom printing in 1970. By 1975 his photographs were being shown in Dallas, Santa Fe and New York and published in the Swiss magazine Camera. Then, in 1979, he stepped away, building a studio cabin in the Louisiana marshlands and making art among the swamps, bayous and rivers of Southeast Louisiana for more than 30 years.
The exhibition celebrates that singular imagination. Visitors will find his three kinds of photographic abstraction — luminous close-ups of light dancing on water, camera-less chemigrams where chemistry blooms into amoeba-like shapes, and meticulous photo-collages cut apart and rejoined by chance — alongside the inventive painting he turned to from 1983: works on glass, wood and paper, and his signature paint “skins,” dried acrylic peeled from glass and reassembled into shimmering new surfaces, including ceiling-hung mobiles.
Because McNease avoided the commercial art world, the full depth of his practice only became clear after his death in 2014. The Ogden now gives New Orleans the happy task of catching up — and seeing the natural world, quite literally, through fresh eyes.
Photo: Ogden Museum of Southern Art
