Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans

A Letter to Our Community

‍Welcome to the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. My name is Raelle Myrick-Hodges, and it is a profound honor to serve as the newly appointed Executive Director of this vital, artist-founded institution. To step into stewardship of the CAC at this moment—poised between a rich history and an expansive future—is both humbling and exhilarating...

Current Programming

Sorbet: a palate cleanser

January 3 - March 9, 2026

Like a refreshing pause between courses, SORBET invites you into a moment of recalibration as the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans turns inward to reset its senses. This exhibition suggests that institutions—like artists and educators—must sometimes interrupt their own routines in order to grow. Centering conversation, experimentation, and artistic process, SORBET reveals evolution in real time. Here, the CACNO is not merely a stage for finished works, but an active, questioning participant within them. Step inside this intentional pause to witness transformation, curiosity, and creative risk unfolding—where reflection becomes action and process becomes the experience itself.

Proximity Index

January 3 - March 9, 2026

Proximity Index invites viewers to consider how influence is absorbed, transformed, and passed on, how trees seed forests, how mentorship shapes practice, and how the materials and relationships that ground an artist’s work extend outward in unexpected, ever-branching ways. Artists bring forward their own responses to the influence of visual artist Ron Bechet. Proximity Index invites viewers to consider how influence is absorbed, transformed, and passed on, how trees seed forests, how mentorship shapes practice, and how the materials and relationships that ground an artist’s work extend outward in unexpected, ever-branching ways.

Festival of New Works

April 3 - July 9, 2026

The Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans turns fifty in 2027. A milestone that is both reflective and forward-thinking, the organization commemorates its beginnings with this season’s Festival/New/Works. The celebration opens with one of four visual art exhibitions honoring artists who have shaped CACNO’s history while championing those who will define what comes next. The CACNO celebrates the city’s essential visual art voices with rising artists inspiring the next fifty years! This inaugural exhibition sets the tone for a series dedicated to fueling creativity, sustaining artistic legacy, and reaffirming CACNO as a home for artists in New Orleans today.

Foster the Future at the CACNO

To learn from the past is one of the surest ways to shape a more generous future for art, artists, and audiences. With care, curiosity, and support in its many forms, the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans can continue to grow as a place of learning, a welcoming home for artists of all backgrounds, and a site of discovery and delight for its community. To work with, play within, or invest in the CACNO, is to ensure that this organization will be one filled with possibility, imagination, and shared purpose. Come join us!

Foster the Future with Us!