NEW ORLEANS.- The New Orleans Museum of Art presents the exhibit Carnival, Carnaval, Carnevale—What is the origin of these words and the rowdy festivals associated with them? The earliest mention of a Carnival celebration is recorded in a twelfth-century Roman account of the pope and upper-class Roman citizens watching a parade through the city, followed by the killing of steers and other animals. The purpose was to play and eat meat before Ash Wednesday, which marked the beginning of Catholic Lent—the forty-day fast leading up to Easter. The Latin term carnem-levare—to remove oneself from flesh or meat—was used to refer to the festival.

The pre-Lenten celebration grew in popularity over the next few centuries, spreading to other European cities and rural communities. Italians eventually shortened the name to Carnevale—flesh farewell— and the word was translated into Spanish and Portuguese as Carnaval, into English as Carnival, and into German as Karneval. Other terms also are used for the festival such as the English—Shrove Tide (fasting time), the German Fasching (fasting), the Swiss— German—Fasnacht (night before fasting), and the French—Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). All of these names allude to the feast before the fast, and many sixteenth-and seventeenth-century celebrations included a mock battle between Carnival and Lent, which symbolized this transition.

Carnival continued to evolve in Europe throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while colonists from Spain, Portugal, and France carried this festival tradition into North and South America. The political and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century had a significant effect on Carnival celebrations on all three continents. As the festivities began to be viewed as civic events by newly formed governments, urban street parades became more structured. Groups from different neighborhoods and workers' guilds competed with one another for the best performances. Indians and freed Africans throughout the Americas now joined into the celebration contributing new expressive forms to this dynamic event. Through periods of repression and revival, the popularity of Carnival continued to grow throughout the twentieth century, and today millions of people participate annually in the celebration.

¡CARNAVAL! the exhibition, provides windows into eight communities in Europe and the Americas where Carnival is a high point of the yearly cycle.