Degas House — An Impressionist in New Orleans

In 1872, Edgar Degas arrived in New Orleans to visit his mother's family at 2306 Esplanade Avenue. He stayed five months. The street was millionaires' row for the city's Creole section — nineteenth-century mansions still line it — and before that it was an eighteenth-century portage route between the Mississippi and Bayou St. John. Degas painted *A Cotton Office in New Orleans* while he was here.

The painting hangs at NOMA. It's one of only two Degas works in a US museum owned by the city of origin. The house is now the Degas House Museum, preserved and open for tours. See the painting first, then tour the house. You get the full arc that way.