The Louisiana State Museum, Louisiana Museum Foundation, and Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser are excited to announce  Rodrigue: Before the Blue Dog, a new exhibition at the Cabildo in New Orleans. This new exhibit presents more than fifty of Rodrigue's unique paintings alongside Louisiana State Museum artifacts related to Cajun culture.

Before George Rodrigue's Blue Dog paintings catapulted him to international fame, the artist was already known for his dark, often ghostly, depictions of the Cajun landscape, culture, and people. Born and raised in New Iberia, Rodrigue returned to the region after attending art school in Los Angeles with a new appreciation of its distinctiveness. "Each time I'd come back to Louisiana," Rodrigue explained, "I'd see something different that I hadn't noticed growing up. I started painting, and I saw all this stuff leaving us, things I wanted to capture in the Cajun country, and so I decided to call myself a Cajun artist."

"George Rodrigue spent the first three decades of his artistic career capturing the landscapes, stories, and people of his native New Iberia and the region he called home. Perhaps no artist was as committed as Rodrigue to preserving and celebrating Cajun cultural heritage. These paintings graphically interpret the history of the Cajun culture in Louisiana, providing a treasure trove of information for future generations," said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser.

Eat, Drink, and Forget the Blues
Acrylic paint and direct image transfer on masonite, 1971/1997
Loaned by the George Godfrey Rodrigue Jr. Family Trust

While his artistic vision was undeniably unique, Rodrigue's interest in his Cajun heritage was part of a broader cultural movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the Cajun Revival. Like Rodrigue, others of his generation sensed the passing of a distinctive culture and set out to document and revitalize its language, traditions, music, and food.

This revival not only increased ethnic pride among Cajuns but also created a new interest in Acadian culture outside the region. When, for example, Louisiana musicians including Dewey Balfa introduced Cajun music to a national audience at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, they were met with standing ovations. Similarly, Paul Prudhomme's penchant for blackening red fish led to a craze for Cajun-inspired cuisine across America. This exhibition will explore how Rodrigue's work reflected and advanced this movement.

The exhibition is loosely divided into six thematic areas, all related to Cajun culture: landscapes, language and legends, families and communities, music, foodways, and way of life. It will also include Rodrigue's fifteen-painting series, the Saga of the Acadians. Painted between 1985 and 1989, the series traces the history of the Acadians as they traveled from France to what is now Nova Scotia to south Louisiana after the Grand Derangement of 1755.

The final section of the exhibition explores Rodrigue's iconic Blue Dog within its Cajun context. While working on an illustration for a book of ghost stories, Rodrigue found inspiration for the famous canine in stories he heard about the loup-garou, a legendary werewolf-like creature that populated many Cajun folktales. Watchdog, the first "Blue Dog" painting, is among the exhibition's highlights.

Rodrigue: Before the Blue Dog will be displayed from November 23, 2024, through September 28, 2025, in the Cabildo, located at 701 Chartres Street in New Orleans. The Cabildo is open Tuesday through Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission to the museum is $10 for adults, $8 for students, seniors, and active military, and free for children six and younger.