nola.com's museum coverage highlights "Second Nature: Japanese Rinpa Paintings from the Gitter-Yelen Collection," on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art through Feb. 14, 2027.

The show gathers roughly 60 Rinpa school scrolls, folding screens and fan paintings dating to Japan's Edo period (1615-1868), largely meditative nature scenes sometimes accompanied by poetry.

According to nola.com, the works are given generous gallery space so visitors can absorb their delicate, elegant execution.

The surprising part, as nola.com tells it, is that for most of the centuries since their creation these paintings were seldom seen outside private settings.

NOMA deputy director and curator of Asian art Lisa Rotondo-McCord told nola.com, "For most of their lives, what the paintings saw was the inside of a box," explaining that in Japan paintings were hung only briefly, keeping the light-sensitive paper and silk works in good condition.

The exhibit also showcases the symbiosis between private collectors and a public institution, an arrangement Rotondo-McCord calls uncommon.

nola.com traces the collection's arc: Dr. Kurt A. Gitter, an acclaimed New Orleans retinal surgeon, became interested in Japanese art while stationed in Japan as a medical officer in the early 1960s, and eleven works were featured in NOMA's 1971 exhibition "New Orleans Collects."

Through the Gitter-Yelen Foundation over five decades, more than 350 works were donated to NOMA — before 1972, the museum's Japanese collection numbered only two notable paintings. Guest curator Yukio Lippit of Harvard leads the show, and a $19.95 catalog is sold at NOMA's Museum Shop.

nola.com's calendar shows this is a busy season for small and regional institutions, and The Almanac reports a parallel example of museums preserving local memory: the Woodside Community Museum has opened an exhibit celebrating 100 years of the Woodside Fire Protection District, with panels tracing its formation in the 1920s and artifacts including a 1932 log book and retired chief John Volpiano's white fire chief hat.

The Almanac says the History Committee spent two years preparing it, and the exhibit — which honors Volpiano, who became California's youngest fire chief at 23 — will be open the first and third Saturday of each month from 1 to 3 p.m. starting Nov. 7.