Ada Wilt Lonnegan (aka Mrs. George F.) (1879–1963) designer; Joseph Fortune Meyer (1848–1931), potter; Vase with Hollyhock Design,1901; underglaze with glossy finish on white clay body; Newcomb Art Museum, 2009.5.1

Bailey Class; Newcomb decorators in the Washington Avenue campus ceramics studio, ca. 1905–06. Collection of Newcomb Archives.

The Moss Mystique: Southern Women and
Newcomb Pottery and Making Her Mark

Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is pleased to announce the opening of two complementary exhibitions, The Moss Mystique: Southern Women and Newcomb Pottery and Making Her Mark, opening to the public on February 5, 2026. The exhibitions will be on view at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane, located in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane University’s uptown campus.

The museum will host an opening reception on Thursday, March 5, featuring a lecture by Dr. Elyse D. Gerstenecker, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Decorative Arts at Telfair Museums, beginning at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Founded in 1895 at the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College in New Orleans—a women’s higher education institution affiliated with Tulane University—Newcomb Pottery emerged as a commercial enterprise designed to put women’s artistic training into professional practice. While male potters shaped the ceramic forms using clays sourced throughout the South, women designers were responsible for surface decoration, drawing inspiration from the region’s plants and wildlife. The pottery quickly gained international recognition for its craftsmanship and its perceived authenticity in representing Southern identity. These strong ties to place endure today, long after the pottery’s closure in 1939.

The Moss Mystique: Southern Women and Newcomb Pottery examines the material practices, imagery, and regional affiliations of Newcomb Pottery, exploring how its artists visualized—and helped define—ideas of place in the American South. Through depictions of local flora, landscapes, and natural forms, the exhibition invites visitors to reconsider how regional identity is constructed, sustained, and transformed over time.

Presented in an adjacent gallery, Making Her Mark traces the stages of pottery production within the Newcomb Pottery business model. Graduates of the Newcomb College art program created hand-crafted ceramic wares that were sold in an on-site gallery, exhibited at world’s fairs, and distributed nationally. Committed to design and handcraft during the Industrial Revolution, Newcomb Pottery demonstrated how artistic ideals could be integrated into a viable commercial enterprise. The show documents the full scope of this enterprise, from classroom instruction and production to bookkeeping and sales.

Together, these exhibitions illuminate Newcomb Pottery’s central role within the museum’s collections and underscore its significance in the histories of women’s education, American decorative arts, and fine art traditions.

The Moss Mystique: Southern Women and Newcomb Pottery is co-organized by Telfair Museums and the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University and curated by Dr. Elyse D. Gerstenecker. Making Her Mark is co-curated by Sierra Polisar, Head of Collections, and Kendyll Gross, Assistant Curator, at the Newcomb Art Museum. For more information, visit newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu.

Exhibition Dates: 
The Moss Mystique: Southern Women and Newcomb Pottery
February 5–December 4, 2026
Making Her Mark
February 5–May 15

Vase, Sarah Agnes Estelle "Sadie" Irvine (1887–1970), artist; Joseph Fortune Meyer (1876–1943), potter. Glaze on clay body. Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane.

Newcomb Pottery is a cornerstone of the Newcomb Art Museum’s permanent collection, exemplifying the distinctive artistic vision and craftsmanship developed at Newcomb College. These works often serve as an entry point for visitors, orienting them to our decorative arts, which spans from circa 500 BCE to the present.

Through Adopt-A-Pot, you are invited to support the care and treatment of both historic and contemporary ceramics. Your financial contribution directly sustains the preservation of these works and ensures stewardship of the collection for future generations.

Read more about Adopt-A-Pot on our website: newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/adopt-a-pot.

*Please note your adopted piece may not be on view in the gallery and the art remains in the custody of the Newcomb Art Museum collection.

Antonio Canova (Possagno, Italy, 1757–1822, Venice, Italy)  Cupid and Psyche marble reproduction of sculpture; Gift of Mr. Alvin P. Howard and Mrs. M.M. Bayon.

Happy Valentine’s Day! As we celebrate love in all its forms, we turn to one of the most tender images in art history: Canova’s Cupid and Psyche. Our piece, titled Cupid and Psyche, is a reproduction of Canova’s celebrated Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, modeled between 1787 and 1793. Now housed in the Louvre Museum, the sculpture captures the moment when Cupid leans in to awaken Psyche with a kiss—a gesture that symbolizes love’s power to restore, revive, and transform.

Reproductions of Canova’s masterpiece—like the example in our permanent collection—played a significant role in 19th- and early 20th‑century art education, when plaster casts were essential tools for studying form and proportion, movement, and Neoclassical ideals of beauty. These replicas remain widely collected today, ranging from small-scale decorative versions to high-quality casts produced for institutional use. The Louvre continues this tradition by offering authorized reproductions with hand-applied patina, created from molds taken directly from the original sculpture.

For more details about Antonio Canova’s sculpture about Cupid and Psyche, see the following: The Louvre and The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Explore the Collections

View Current Exhibitions

Public Programs

Newcomb Art Museum offers guided tours and an array of public programs, all free of charge. Designed around the salient themes and images of each exhibition, such activities speak to an array of community and campus interests. https://newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/programs/

For more information on events and current exhibitions, visit: newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu

Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane is Free and Open to the Public.
The museum will be closed Feb. 14 – 17 for the Mardi Gras holiday.
Regular Hours: Monday – Friday 10 AM – 5 PM | Saturday 11 AM – 4 PM | Sunday CLOSED

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