Caricatures at the Museum

Kathy Buskett
May 13, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Nov 28, 2024

“Unknown Sitters” Exhibit

My job as a caricaturist brings me to such interesting places! The one this last Saturday was definitely a first.

The Historic New Orleans collection museum in New Orleans had a contest featuring “unknown sitters” - people who were painted but no one knew who they were.

So the museum decided to have a contest. School children from all over the USA were asked to write brief stories about the unknown sitters. The results were astonishing. I went in and looked around before I started. Some of the stories were funny. Some were disturbing, like the vampire who “has to eat.” Some were poignant. Some were even empowering, much like the art itself. All were fascinating.

The winners were given a reception. And I was hired to draw my portrait-style caricatures of the winners - I called them “known sitters”.

The museum was open to the public as well so I got to draw the very interesting passers-by from all over the world in the French Quarter.

I have enclosed a few of pics of the winners here. They each told me what their story was, but I was pretty busy and don’t remember. Wouldn’t it be interesting to try to match the story with the schoolchildren?

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Known sitters:

Rose colored glasses girl

Twins! One never smiles, the parents told me. He’s the one who won the contest. I’d be interested to know which story he wrote!

Mama & Daughter What a pretty duo!

More twins! 👯 the smaller one was the contest winner.

Another proud writer. How cool to be acknowledged as a writer at this young age!

I would have been thrilled to have this kind of encouragement. May you grow up to be a writer!

This young lady was the only one I knew exactly which painting she wrote about. The light box behind her was momentarily displaying it as I took this pic!

One final known sitter. The rest I believe were either family and friends of the writers or were just checking out the museum. I’ll post them too… but first, some of the actual art & writing.

This one was inspiring

This next one made me laugh

And this one made me shudder

I thought this one was insightful into the inner workings of family life, particularly since the writer was only in third grade!

And this is the only one I could definitely match with the writer. See pics above

There many more but I couldn’t fit them all. one in particular had a wonderful poem I wanted to include but the pic I took unfortunately didn’t turn out.

And this one was my favorite ❤️

And finally here’s a few pics of the interesting folks who wandered into the gallery. Wish I had room for them all but my blog will crash if I load too many pics!