New Orleans Museum of Art

This guide to the New Orleans Museum of Art traces the story of Isaac Delgado, a sugar broker who arrived in the city from Jamaica at fourteen and rose through the sugar trade to fund the museum's construction, only to be too sick to attend its opening on December 16, 1911. It follows the whirlwind building process, from seventeen competing architects to a cornerstone laid that March, and the nine paintings that hung inside on opening day. Delgado wanted, in his own words, a temple of art for rich and poor alike, open to anyone who walked in off the street.