Born in 1946 in New Orleans but raised in Hawaii and California, John T.
Magill has worked at The Historic New Orleans Collection (THNOC) since 1982,
when he was first hired as a picture cataloguer. He currently serves as a THNOC
curator.
Over the past decade, he has been responsible for numerous THNOC exhibitions,
including Pelican’s Eye: Views of New Orleans (a history of the city
through bird's eye views); From Bank to Shore (neighborhood growth in New
Orleans); This Vast Land (the early French period in New Orleans); The
Long Weekend (the arts and the French Quarter in the 1920s); and A
Mystical Bal Masque (a history of the artistic design of the Mystic Club
Carnival ball).
Mr. Magill has also written extensively for The Historic New Orleans
Collection Quarterly, New Orleans Magazine, Louisiana
Cultural Vistas magazine, and Gambit Weekly. He has contributed to
several books published by or associated with THNOC, most recently Charting
Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps (2003), which received several awards,
including Book of the Year from the Louisiana Library Association, Louisiana
Endowment for the Arts, and the Gulf Coast Historical Association.
A graduate of the University of New Orleans, where he earned both his
bachelor and master of arts degrees in history, Mr. Magill lectures regularly
about various aspects of New Orleans life and history, including urban growth,
neighborhood histories, Mardi Gras, and more. He lives in New Orleans.