NEW ORLEANS, LA. – The New Orleans Museum of Art recently opened an entire gallery devoted to the Lois and H. Lloyd Hawkins, Jr, Collection of Meissen porcelain given to the museum in 1997.as well as other themes.

Contemporary audiences may not comprehend the mania for porcelain set off by the development of the formula for true or hard-paste porcelain at the Meissen factory in late 1709. Among royalty and aristocrats, the possession of porcelain immediately became one of the major status symbols of the Eighteenth Century, second only to owning an appropriate palace as a mark of rank and privilege. Notable figures such as the German Count Brul, Tsarinas Elizabeth Petrovna and Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, various members of the Rothchild family and J. Pierpont Morgan, began collecting Meissen figures.

The Hawkins Collection shows the great variety of figural work produced by the factory. The pieces on view include examples of Meissen’s colorful and fantastical figures such as “The Four Continents: America,” which depicts an allegorical female figure wearing a brightly colored, feathered headdress and costume while riding a smiling green alligator. In contrast, “The Three Graces,” unglazed and nude, is an exquisite example of the refined, neo-classical figures produced by Meissen.

While the Hawkins Collection will be on permanent display at NOMA, the objects will be rotated periodically to provide visitors with the full scope of the collection.

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm.