It takes more than a handshake to gain the trust of a Guantanamo Bay prison detainee—but photographs can go a long way.

Before disguises or paint on a canvas, one confronts a mirror at the beginning of the Brilliant Disguise: Masks and Other Transformations exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center.  

The Contemporary Arts Center wrapped up a monthslong search for a new executive director today, naming Neil Barclay as the new head at Camp and Julia. Before taking the top job at CAC, Barclay worked as a senior consultant for a California-based firm that provides management expertise to cultural organizations known as Arts Consulting Group.

Hollywood's stars are still recovering from Oscar excesses. Meanwhile, Hollywood South's Quvenzhané Wallis is trending on Twitter and being parodied on Saturday Night Live, baker-turned-actor Dwight Henry is working to develop three new restaurants. For their part, the creators of Beasts of the Southern Wild are getting down and dirty.

On Friday, March 1, and Saturday, March 2, composer, trumpeter, poet and artist Hannibal Lokumbe will perform selections of his works at the CAC in a special preview of his exhibition entitled “And Their Voices Cry Freedom Again." The exhibition’s opening reception will take place a week later on Friday, March 8, from 6-8 p.m.

by Brad Rhines

While the four Oscar nominations are certainly impressive, don’t expect Hollywood to tame Court 13, the New Orleans film collective responsible for Beasts of the Southern Wild. On March 8, less than two weeks after this year’s Academy Awards, the group will return home to showcase their unique vision at the Contemporary Arts Center in the exhibition Beyond “Beasts”: The Art of Court 13.

by Emma Boyce

Jazz up your holiday season with some much needed folly at the Contemporary Arts Center on December 18 and 19 for Judith Owen and Harry Shearer’s Holiday Sing-A-Long. If you’re already grunting ‘bah, humbug’ at the very idea of a sing-a-long, think again. Shearer—the guy who brought you the sinister scrooge himself, Mr. Burns of The Simpsons, and helped bring you the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap— and his singing, songwriting wife revitalize hackneyed Christmas classics with plenty of biting wit and irony.    

by Lianna Patch

Even when it's not White Linen Night or Art for Art's Sake, the Contemporary Arts Center offers up discussion-provoking exhibits at the corner of Camp and Julia. Some of the museum's current exhibits are still on view through Jan. 20, 2012. Lianna Patch stopped in recently to peruse a pair of offerings:

In the appreciated absence of a histrionic reinterpretation of Oscar Wilde’s classic drawing-room comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest (directed by Garrett Prejean), Skin Horse Theatre presents this favorite at The Contemporary Arts Center with earnestness, indeed, as it chuckles through a witty evisceration of social institutions and classist expectations.

Make room, Mike Scott. Starting Thursday, everyone in New Orleans is a critic. The New Orleans Film Society is holding the 23rd annual New Orleans Film Festival from October 11 to October 18, featuring some of the best films from around Louisiana and the world. Throughout the week, the festival packs in more than 200 films, 70 directors, panels and parties into 8 days of cinematic adventure.