2025 Storyville Sex Drugs and Jazz: A Full Review

Okay, so let’s talk about the new 2025 exhibition, the one with the name that really grabs you: ‘Storyville Sex Drugs and Jazz’. Honestly, I’ve been waiting for something like this for a little while now. So many things that try to talk about old New Orleans, they often just give you the polished version. You know, they show you the pretty buildings and play some happy jazz tunes, and that’s more or less it. This exhibition, however, well, it promises to show you everything. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first. It’s a very bold title, you know, and sometimes that’s just a way to get people in the door. I mean, could they really handle such heavy topics with the respect they deserve? I went in basically expecting one of two things: either it would be kind of sanitized, or it would be overly sensational. Anyway, what I found inside was something quite different, and pretty much something that’s going to stick with me for a really long time. You see, this wasn’t just a collection of old photos and facts. At the end of the day, it was almost like stepping back in time for real. The team behind this pretty much succeeded in creating an experience that’s deeply human, and frankly, deeply moving in a lot of ways.

A First Impression That Actually Sticks

So, the moment you walk through the doors, you know, you are immediately hit with a change in the air. Like, it’s not just the temperature drop; it’s something more. The lights are obviously turned down very low, mimicking the gas lamps of the era, which sort of casts these long, dancing shadows on the walls. The air itself feels just a little thick, you know, scented with a mix of what could be cheap perfume, old wood, and maybe a little bit of distant cigar smoke. It’s incredibly effective, I mean really. In some respects, your brain just accepts it. You see, the first room is basically designed to be a bit disorienting. There aren’t any big signs telling you where to go. Instead, you’re just sort of pulled in by sound. For instance, from one direction, you can just hear the faint, tinny sound of a ragtime piano. From another, you get the low murmur of conversations and, you know, the occasional burst of loud laughter. As a matter of fact, it feels alive, unlike a lot of museum exhibits that can feel so static. You have to make a choice, right away, on which thread of this world you want to follow first. Frankly, I just stood there for a minute, letting it all sink in. It’s a very clever way to begin, because it gets you to stop thinking like a visitor and start feeling more like a participant, or at the end of the day, an observer present in that time.

I decided to follow the piano music, naturally. The path, as I was saying, wound through a narrow hallway designed to look like a French Quarter alleyway. The walls were done up with this really amazing faux-brickwork, and you could actually see recreated posters peeling off them, advertising everything from patent medicines to upcoming boxing matches. There was just this one flickering gaslight overhead, so it really felt like you were somewhere you maybe shouldn’t be. Honestly, that feeling of slight unease is a big part of the whole thing. It’s not about glamorizing the past; it’s more or less about showing it as it was, with all the rough edges. The ground beneath my feet was even made to feel like cobblestone, which was a very surprising touch. I mean, they didn’t have to do that, but it absolutely added to the feeling of being there. At the end of the day, you understand that every little thing was thought about. Every sound, every smell, every texture you see, they all work together to basically build a world before you even see a single artifact or read a single word of text. And seriously, that is what sets this exhibition apart from so many others I’ve seen over the years.

The Sounds of a Bygone Era: More Than Just Jazz

Now, let’s get into the music, because obviously, with ‘Jazz’ in the title, it’s a huge part of the experience. But here’s the thing that’s kind of interesting: it’s not just a playlist of early jazz classics on a loop. Oh no, it’s much more sophisticated than that. Basically, the curators used a pretty amazing sound system, with speakers hidden all over the place. So, as you walk through different parts of the exhibit, the soundscape changes around you in a really organic way. For instance, in one section, which is set up to look like the inside of a less fancy saloon, you hear a very raw, bluesy kind of piano playing. You can just sort of picture a lone musician in the corner, you know, playing for drinks. It’s not a perfect studio recording; you can actually hear missed notes and the clinking of glasses in the background. It feels very real, almost like you’re eavesdropping on a moment in time.

Then, as you move towards a recreation of one of the more opulent ‘houses’, the music gets a little more complex. Here, you might hear a small combo, perhaps with a cornet and a clarinet, playing something a bit more refined and structured. This, I mean, is where you start to hear the real birth of jazz. The music is still pretty raw and full of feeling, but you can sort of sense the improvisation and the interplay between the musicians that would come to define the genre. They have these great little listening stations, too. You can put on a pair of headphones and listen to expertly restored recordings of pioneers like Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard. Of course, next to the audio, they have these wonderful little biographies that tell you their stories—not just as musicians, but as people who lived and worked in this very tough environment. It’s just a little detail, but it makes the music feel so much more personal and important. You aren’t just hearing a song; you’re hearing a person’s life, more or less.

But like I said, it’s not only the music. The ambient sound design is really what makes the whole thing feel complete. As you walk down a recreated street scene, for example, you can hear the clip-clop of horses, the rattle of a passing streetcar, and the loud calls of street vendors. Honestly, if you close your eyes for a second, you could almost believe you’re really there. They even have these subtle, scripted conversations that fade in and out as you pass by certain doorways. You might just catch a snippet of a business deal or a bit of gossip. Seriously, none of it is really a big, dramatic performance. Instead, it’s just the background noise of life, and it’s that texture that genuinely sells the illusion of being in Storyville. At the end of the day, you realize that jazz didn’t just appear out of nowhere; it grew out of this very specific, very noisy, and very human soup of sounds. This exhibit actually lets you hear that for yourself, which is an absolutely incredible achievement.

The ‘Blue Books’ and the Unspoken Rules

Alright, so one of the most talked-about parts of Storyville’s history is the infamous ‘Blue Books’. And frankly, this exhibition handles them in a very smart and respectful way. For those who don’t know, these were basically little guidebooks for visitors to the district. You know, they listed the names and addresses of the brothels, sometimes with descriptions of the women who worked there and the services they offered. I mean, it was literally a directory for the vice district. In other words, a really jarring piece of history. The exhibition has a climate-controlled room where you can actually see several original copies of these books, laid out under glass. It’s pretty chilling to look at them, to be honest. The pages are so thin and yellowed, yet the text is still so clear. You see, the way they are presented is not for cheap thrills. There are no dramatic spotlights or anything like that. Instead, the lighting is very somber and the room is quiet.

Next to the display cases, there are these interactive screens that really add some much-needed context. You can, for instance, touch on a name in a digital version of the Blue Book, and it will bring up what little is known about that person. Sometimes, it’s just a name and an address. But in other cases, the curators have managed to dig up more information—perhaps a census record, a photograph, or even a line from a personal letter. In doing this, they literally give a voice back to women who were, for all intents and purposes, reduced to just a line of text in a directory. It’s a very powerful way to handle the subject. You’re not just looking at a historical curiosity; you’re being confronted with the actual lives of the people involved. It forces you to think about the economic and social pressures that, you know, led these women to Storyville in the first place. You sort of get a sense of the complex social structure of the district, from the powerful madams who ran the houses to the women working in them.

What I found especially insightful was a section dedicated to the “rules” of Storyville, both written and unwritten. You learn, for example, about the strict racial segregation that was in place, even within a district that seemed so lawless. There’s a big, detailed map on one wall that shows how the district was zoned, with certain areas for white clientele and others for black clientele. The Blue Books themselves often specified the race of the women in each house. Frankly, seeing it all laid out like that is a very stark reminder of the social realities of the time. It really dispels any romantic notions one might have about Storyville being some kind of utopian paradise of free expression. As a matter of fact, it was a business, and like any business, it operated on a foundation of cold, hard rules and social hierarchies. The exhibition makes that very clear, which is definitely to its credit.

Confronting the ‘Sex’ and ‘Drugs’ in the Title

So, we need to address the two most provocative words in the title: ‘Sex’ and ‘Drugs’. I mean, that’s what a lot of people will be curious about, right? As I was saying, I was a bit worried they would either ignore these topics or exploit them. But the approach here is actually very academic and, you know, human. They confront these subjects head-on, but always with the goal of historical understanding rather than shock value. The ‘Sex’ part is explored not through explicit imagery, but through personal stories and artifacts. For instance, there’s a recreated room from one of the more modest “cribs”—the small, one-room apartments where many women worked. It’s stark and barely furnished, with just a bed, a small table, and a washbasin. In that room, a projector plays a silent loop of portraits of Storyville women, many of them taken by the photographer E.J. Bellocq. Their expressions are so varied—some defiant, some weary, some seemingly playful. It’s incredibly moving, you know, because it forces you to see them as individuals, not as a monolith. Quotes from letters and diaries are displayed on the walls, and these just add another layer of humanity to the story. You pretty much walk away with a deep sense of empathy.

The topic of ‘Drugs’ is handled with similar care and a focus on historical context. There’s a fascinating display about the patent medicines that were common at the time. You know, many of these remedies, which were completely legal and sold over the counter, contained huge amounts of opium, cocaine, or alcohol. The exhibition has a collection of these old bottles with their outlandish labels promising to cure everything from a cough to a “nervous disposition.” Clearly, this section shows that substance use wasn’t just some back-alley activity; it was woven into the fabric of everyday life, for better or worse. There is also a small, somber section about addiction and its consequences. It features accounts from doctors and reformers of the era who were just beginning to understand the public health crisis that was unfolding. Instead of being judgmental, the tone is very matter-of-fact. It presents the information and, more or less, lets you draw your own conclusions about the social and medical landscape of the early 20th century. In that case, it’s not about wagging a finger at the past, but about understanding the very real problems people faced. I mean, they were dealing with pain, both physical and emotional, and this was one of the ways they tried to cope, basically.

Visuals That Genuinely Transport You

Okay, let’s talk about the look of this whole thing, because visually, this exhibition is just a complete knockout. I already mentioned the recreated rooms and alleyways, but really, the attention to detail is just something else. For instance, in the reconstruction of a high-end Storyville parlor, the wallpaper is an exact replica of a pattern found in an old photograph. The furniture is all authentic to the period, either antiques or perfect reproductions. You can see the plush velvet on the chairs is just slightly worn, as if from years of use. It’s these little touches, you know, that make it all feel so believable. You almost feel like you shouldn’t sit on the furniture, not because there’s a rope in front of it, but because it feels like you’re in someone else’s house. Honestly, it’s that convincing.

Of course, a huge part of the visual story is the photography. The work of E.J. Bellocq is featured heavily, as it should be. His portraits of the women of Storyville are just so famous for a reason. But the exhibition doesn’t just hang them on a wall. Instead, they are often projected onto surfaces within the recreated rooms, making it seem like the ghostly presence of these women is still there. In one particularly clever display, a series of Bellocq’s portraits slowly fades in and out on an antique mirror. So, for a moment, you see your own reflection, and then it’s replaced by a face from a hundred years ago. It’s a bit startling, frankly, but a very effective way of connecting the past to the present. You literally see yourself in the story for a split second. Beyond Bellocq, there are also a ton of other photographs showing the streets, the architecture, and the everyday people of the district. Many of these are images I had never seen before, pulled from private collections and city archives. They show Storyville not just as a den of iniquity, but as a living, breathing neighborhood. You see kids playing on the sidewalks, delivery men making their rounds, and musicians gathering on street corners. These pictures add a layer of normal life that is so often left out of the Storyville legend, you know. They show you that it was, at the end of the day, a community with all the normal stuff going on alongside the more famous activities.

Is This Exhibition Really for Everyone?

So, the big question is, who should go and see this? To be honest, despite the racy title, this is a very serious and educational experience. I would say anyone with a real interest in American history, social history, or the origins of jazz music will find it absolutely fascinating. You, as a history buff, will just love the depth of the research and the sheer number of authentic artifacts on display. Music lovers will, of course, get a huge kick out of the incredible sound design and the deep dive into the early sounds of jazz. You could spend hours just in the listening stations alone, I mean really. But what about the average person, who’s just kind of curious? Well, I think they would get a lot out of it too, as long as they come with an open mind. This isn’t really a “fun” day out in the traditional sense. It’s thought-provoking, and at times, it’s a bit sad and unsettling. You have to be prepared for that, basically.

Now, as for families, I would have to say this is definitely not for young children. Obviously. The themes are very mature, and even though the exhibition handles them with a lot of tact, the subjects of prostitution and drug use are central to the story being told. I mean, it says so right in the title. For older teenagers, say 16 and up, it could actually be a very valuable educational experience, but I would strongly suggest that parents go with them. It’s the kind of exhibition that will spark a lot of questions and could lead to some really important conversations. The curators have, in a way, done a great job of providing context, but a little bit of parental guidance would still be a really good idea. Ultimately, this is an exhibit for adults and mature young adults who want to look past the myths of New Orleans and understand a very complex and influential part of its history. If you are looking for a simple, feel-good story about the birthplace of jazz, well, this probably isn’t it. But if you want the real story, the whole story, with all its light and all its shadows, then you absolutely should not miss this.

You pretty much walk away with a deep sense of empathy… you’re not just looking at a historical curiosity; you’re being confronted with the actual lives of the people involved. At the end of the day, it’s about seeing the humanity behind the history.

• Authentic Atmosphere: You actually feel like you’ve stepped back in time, thanks to the incredibly detailed recreated environments and sensory details like smells and sounds.
• Immersive Soundscape: The audio is more than just music; it’s a living soundscape that changes as you move through the exhibit, making the whole world feel very real.
• Human-Centered Storytelling: Honestly, the focus is always on the real people of Storyville, using personal stories and artifacts to give voice to those who were often silenced.
• Respectful Handling of Mature Themes: The exhibit deals with the ‘Sex’ and ‘Drugs’ of its title in a serious, historical way that informs rather than exploits.
• Visually Striking: A combination of rare photography, authentic artifacts, and clever projection technology makes this a really memorable visual experience.
• Not for Young Kids: This is a definitely mature exhibition, so it’s something for adults and possibly older teens who have some parental guidance.

Read our full review: [Storyville Sex Drugs and Jazz Full Review and Details] See Prices, Availability & Reserve Now ([Reserve Storyville 2025 Tickets])