New Orleans, LA

PARSE NOLA is a curatorial and research-based residency and art program that serves as a platform for critical dialogue about contemporary art. This program hosts three to five visiting curators, writers, and artists annually. During extended stays in the city, residents are encouraged to engage in studio visits with local artists, conduct research in the area, and utilize PARSE’s resources to experiment with the boundaries and possibilities of curatorial and artistic practice. ​PARSE NOLA is a 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization.

BUREAU of CHANGE is an education-centric lab for real art practice in New Orleans. We create, curate and exhibit socially and politically engaged work. BUREAU of CHANGE was founded by Margot Herster with a group of her former students and recent graduates from Louisiana State University. Originating out of dissatisfaction with higher education, particularly in arts and media, BUREAU developed into a new school in the form of an atelier-style studio.  A diverse group—established artists and designers, paid student apprentices and young artists, scholars and community experts, and the public—interact to create. Our objectives are influenced by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project implemented during the Great Depression. We harken a a lost but not forgotten era when the government stimulated jobs in the arts by employing artists to create public works and subsidizing community education centers that offered training in arts skills applicable to industrial jobs of the time. Our process commissions artists and non-artists to collaborate on creative works aimed at inciting institutional change while studying social technology, digital media theory, interdisciplinary research and artistic production. BUREAU of CHANGE produces exhibitions, participatory and site-specific experiences, workshops and public programming, made-for-internet works, and collaborations with local and international […]