The exhibit “Sunday Best: Faith, Family, and Fashion,” now on view at the Old Ursuline Convent Museum, showcases curatorial imagination at work.
A pre-Vatican II habit worn by the Sisters of the Holy Family is on display.
Born as a fundraising event for the St. Louis Cathedral restoration, it became a more comprehensive look at the churchgoing finery of both parishioners and clergy.
A dozen special-occasion outfits worn by Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans and chairwoman of the cathedral-restoration effort, form the central display of the exhibit.
Expanding the show beyond those garments incorporates a bishop’s crozier dating to 1793, pre- and post-Vatican II clergy vestments and, in an alcove dedicated to Black Catholics’ practice of “Showing Up and Showing Out,” an Easter Sunday 2022 ensemble credited to Soul Train Fashions (mint-green pinstriped jacket, white slacks and shoes, socks showing a glimpse of pink) worn by Father Tony Ricard at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church.
Pulling it all together is a central corridor packed with family snapshots of parishioners “showing out” in their Sunday best through the years — an exhibition component filled out by a call for submissions in the Clarion Herald.
The snapshot gallery is a rolling history of clothing and hairstyles recorded at special moments in the subjects’ lives. The snapshot subjects pose “in front of the altar at their church or on the sidewalk outside of their house or getting dressed up for first communion,” co-curator Sarah Waits said. “Easter egg hunts on the church lawn — just a variety of activities that happen in and around our churches. And each is full of people meaningful to the others in the photo.”
Other snapshot portraits will make their way to the exhibit’s walls during the run of the exhibition. Christmas and Easter themes are a possibility.
“So, it’ll be sort of a changing photo wall,” Waits said. “You might see yourself as you come through.”
A fashion fundraiser
Presented with the original concept of a fundraising display of Benson’s finery, Christopher Wiseman, executive director of the Catholic Cultural Center of New Orleans, which oversees both the cathedral and convent museum, engaged Waits and co-curator Katie Beeman.
They proposed the museum “grow this into an exhibit not just about Mrs. Benson’s clothes, many of which she’s worn at religious events — going to visit the Pope, things like that — but also let’s grow it into something broader and deeper to really talk about how New Orleanians and people in our region dress for worship,” Wiseman said. “And so that’s basically where ‘Sunday Best’ came from.”
Benson “was on board right away,” Wiseman added. “I think she enjoyed the process, but she was also very humble about it. She said, ‘Do you really think people are going to want to come to a thing that’s about my clothes?’
“But we assured her (that) this isn’t only going to be about (her) clothes. That’s going to get some attention, but it’s really telling a story about history and culture in our region.”
The designation “special occasion” describing Benson’s loaned couture is an understatement. Items in the exhibit were worn during an audience with Pope Francis and at a Super Bowl owners party in February 2025. The initial conception of the display as a cathedral fundraiser was realized at the exhibit’s Sept. 12 opening fete, which drew 350 attendees.
Local interest
The Benson loan items will be replaced in late December by other examples of local Sunday best garments, Waits said, including Mardi Gras Indian suits.
The exhibit, plus newly updated informational panels about the convent structure’s history and Waits’ new exhibit tracing Pope Leo’s local family tree, encourages Wiseman that the convent museum could attract more locals.
“Most New Orleanians don’t know about this place,” he said. “They don’t know it’s the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley. And this exhibit and other things that we’re doing might get their attention. And when they come here, before they even get to the exhibit, they’re just blown away by this quiet compound on the quieter side of the French Quarter. They had no idea this is here. They had no idea it’s so beautiful. They had no idea it’s one of the only bits of French architecture in the French Quarter.
“We’re four blocks from the cathedral, which everybody knows, and they love the place once we can get them here.”
