A 40-ton granite fountain that has towered over downtown New Orleans for more than six decades is about to get a new address in City Park. The New Orleans Museum of Art announced it has received Isamu Noguchi’s Mississippi Fountain, an 18-foot sculpture donated by the Besthoff family, which will be installed at NOMA’s main entrance this fall.
The sculpture has stood at K&B Plaza since the early 1960s, according to New Orleans CityBusiness, which first reported the donation. Moving it will be no small feat: as reported by The Art Newspaper, the fountain must be lifted 40 feet into the air by crane and secured inside a custom steel cage for the trip from the Central Business District to City Park, after which NOMA plans to restore its long-dormant water feature to full working order.
NOMA director Susan M. Taylor said the piece was designed in conversation with the architecture of Gordon Bunshaft’s plaza and building, and that visitors will find new meaning in it as it transforms the museum’s neoclassical façade. She added that the Besthoff family’s gift ensures the work remains in New Orleans and publicly accessible for generations, per the CityBusiness report.
A Building Sale Set the Move in Motion
The relocation follows the October 2025 decision to list K&B Plaza, at 1055 St. Charles Avenue, for sale — a move that pushed the Besthoff family to find the sculpture a permanent public home, according to The Art Newspaper. K&B Plaza was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill along with local architects Nolan, Norman and Nolan, and it served as headquarters for the K&B drugstore chain that Sydney J. Besthoff and Gustave Katz founded in 1905. The chain, sold to Rite Aid in 1997, is remembered locally for the distinctive “K&B purple” brand color that, per New Orleans Historical, originated from a discounted batch of wrapping paper back in 1911 and still carries cultural weight in the city today…