Ogden Museum to Showcase Works by Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer, and Dorothy Hood

Ogden Museum of Southern Art has announced that Vicinal Visions: Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer & Dorothy Hood, will be on view March 21 through July 19, 2026. Drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition highlights three visionary artists whose work expanded the boundaries of abstraction in the American South. In conjunction with the exhibition, Ogden Museum will present a slate of public programs and exclusive exhibition-related merchandise.



While Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer and Dorothy Hood each developed her own distinct visual language, their work shares a spirit of experimentation and Modernist sensibilities, refracted through individual lenses of personal experience and place.

Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, explains: “This exhibition is not only a focus on regional art history; it is a reconsideration of American abstraction itself. Bongé's luminous introspection, Kohlmeyer's fluid symbolism and Hood's cosmic expansiveness reveal a shared commitment to experimentation, intellectual rigor and spiritual inquiry. Together, they demonstrate that the story of twentieth-century abstraction cannot be told fully without including the vision, ambition and radical imagination of these Southern artists.”

Placed in conversation, the works of Bongé, Kohlmeyer and Hood resonate with the vitality of Modernist expression in the American South. These three artists, born between 1903 and 1918, each responded to the global currents of abstraction in ways that were shaped by their specific geographies—whether the salty, storm-bent landscape of the Mississippi Gulf Coast; the diverse, vibrant and historic cultural fabric of New Orleans; or the spirit of artistic optimism and endless possibility shared by both Mexico City and Houston. Together, these three women testify to the power of artists who, working outside the traditional centers of New York and Paris, expanded the horizons of Modern Art and redefined what Southern Abstraction could mean.



Vicinal Visions: Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer & Dorothy Hood will be accompanied by exhibition-related merchandise, including an exclusive t-shirt and a postcard available for purchase in the Museum Store and online.

Exhibition-related programming will feature a Cocktails & Culture evening event, a Curator Walkthrough, a Free Family Day, work-related meditations and Adult Studio workshops, offering the community multiple opportunities to engage more deeply with the exhibition. Additional program details will be available at ogdenmuseum.org.

Vicinal Visions: Dusti Bongé, Ida Kohlmeyer & Dorothy Hood is curated by Bradley Sumrall, Curator of the Collection at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and will be on view from March 21 through July 19, 2026. The exhibition is generously supported at the Contributing Sponsor Level by Catherine Makk, and at the Host Committee Level by Monica Ann Frois & Eve Barrie Masinter, Jan W. Katz & Jim Derbes, Jane Lowentritt & Jo Ellen Bezou, Roger Ogden & Ken Barnes and Donna Vitter.

For more information about the exhibition and related programming, visit ogdenmuseum.org. For media inquiries, please contact Marketing & Communications Manager Capri Guarisco at cguarisco@ogdenmuseum.org.

About Dusti Bongé (1903-1993)

Dusti Bongé, widely considered Mississippi's first Modernist painter, absorbed the lessons of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism while remaining deeply rooted in the rhythms of the Gulf South. Her canvases oscillate between dreamlike figuration and gestural abstraction, drawing inspiration from the Gulf Coast's natural and built environments as well as the inner worlds of dreams, visions and the psyche.

About Ida Kohlmeyer (1912-1997)

Working in New Orleans, Ida Kohlmeyer moved early toward non-objective and geometric abstraction. She later developed an instantly recognizable visual vocabulary of symbols, grids and calligraphic marks, producing compositions that feel simultaneously playful and disciplined, personal and universal. Influenced by artists such as Mark Rothko and Hans Hofmann, Kohlmeyer distilled Modernist ideas into a visual syntax inseparable from the vibrancy and cultural richness of her native city.

About Dorothy Hood (1918- 2000)

Dorothy Hood, though raised in Houston, was profoundly shaped by her decades in Mexico, where she moved in a circle of poets, composers, Surrealists and Mexican Muralists, most notably José Clemente Orozco. Her monumental canvases radiate a cosmic sensibility, merging Abstract Expressionist gesture with a metaphysical search for space, silence and the infinite.

About Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Located in the vibrant Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana since 1999 and open to the public since 2003, Ogden Museum of Southern Art invites visitors to experience and learn about the artists and culture of the American South. Ogden Museum is home to a collection of more than four thousand works, making it the largest and most comprehensive repository dedicated to Southern art in the nation, with particular strength in the genres of Self-Taught art, Regionalism, photography and contemporary art. The Museum is further recognized for its original exhibitions, public events and educational programs, which examine the development of visual art alongside Southern traditions of music, literature and local craft.

Ogden Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Admission is free to Museum Members and admission for Non-Members is $15.00 for adults, $12.00 for seniors 65 and older, $7.00 for children ages 5-17 and free for children under 5. Prices are subject to change when exhibitions are being rotated. Admission is free to Louisiana residents on Thursdays, courtesy of The Helis Foundation.