"The Museumgoer" Podcaster Dave Walker Gets Personal with Claus Sadlier, Museum Curator/Owner
The Museumgoer Podcast | themuseumgoer.com
By Dave Walker
October 31, 2024
The Museumgoer is a website dedicated to museums in New Orleans and the Gulf South. Featuring a blog, a podcast, a free newsletter, and a YouTube page, www.themuseumgoer.com visited the New Orleans Storyville Museum for in-depth coverage.
Episode: November 3, 2024
The singular vision of its creator, Claus Sadlier, the New Orleans Storyville Museum provides visitors an overview of the city's infamous red-light district at the turn of the 20th century. This episode of the Museumgoer Podcast enters the museum, located just a few steps from the district's historical footprint, for a walk-and-talk with Sadlier.
As noted in the column and accompanying audio, the story behind the Storyville Museum deserves its own explainer: Claus Sadlier, the museum’s creator pictured above in a photo supplied by the museum, wrote every word on the museum’s walls (and then some; the museum’s 58 text panels were edited down from 108) and personally oversaw the acquisition of the museum’s historical objects.
A Brother Martin and University of New Orleans graduate, Sadlier went from business school in Indiana to business success, a couple of times, in California. Inventing the insulated paper coffee cup was his Sutter’s Mill moment “at the right time, at the right place, the beginning of the specialty coffee industry,” he said. Yet, “My heart was really always in New Orleans.”
His fortune made, Sadlier moved back about 10 years ago and renovated a few historic homes. “So, again I was more intertwined in the history of the Quarter and reading more and more and then really getting the itch to start a business,” he said.
He toured museums throughout America and abroad and was struck by how contemporary museum exhibits had reached beyond objects in cases and wall text to better engage visitors in narrative. On one return home, he visited the National WWII Museum for the first time in many years, and the vision for a French Quarter museum dedicated to Storyville moved closer to reality.
I toured the museum with Sadlier and you can listen to our walk-and-talk on the podcast.
The pre-Storyville geography of sin The museum’s narrative begins with a brisk overview of New Orleans’s founding and early history The infamous Storyville Blue Books The ghostly parlor arrives The enigmatic Bellocq portraits The casket girls Jazz in the district A few other Storyville diversions Claus Sadlier New Orleans Storyville Museum owner curator This Instagram-ready installation, which explains why the light is red A display covering the many possible Houses of the Rising Sun The show-stopping walk down Basin Street
