New Orleans Museum of Art

Isaac Delgado wanted New Orleans to rival any museum city. In 1911, the Jamaican-born sugar magnate founded what became the New Orleans Museum of Art, a Beaux-Arts building anchoring the entrance to City Park. The timing mattered: this was the same decade the park's governing board undertook the improvements that shaped the landscape — a casino building, the Peristyle, infrastructure that suggested permanence. Delgado placed his museum at the threshold of that effort, a statement about what the city could hold. The collection now spans 40,000 works across 5,000 years, with one of the strongest holdings of French and Japanese art in the South. The adjacent Besthoff Sculpture Garden spreads 90 works across 11 acres of lagoons and live oaks, some of those oaks older than 600 years. The garden is free. Museum admission is charged; Louisiana residents enter free on Wednesdays. City Park itself was founded in 1854 on land that had been the Allard Plantation, reserved for park purposes through John McDonogh's will. By the time Delgado opened his museum, the park had survived decades as a dueling ground — men defended honor under the oaks until dueling was outlawed in 1890 — and had begun its transformation into the public greenspace that would grow to 1,300 acres. The museum survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded 95% of the park and toppled an estimated 1,000 trees. The Dueling Oak still stands where Dueling Oaks Drive meets Dreyfous Drive, between the sculpture garden and the museum entrance. There's a small sign in front of it.