BATON ROUGE, LA.- The Louisiana Art & Science Museum opened The Faith & The Fury: Noel Rockmore and His Patron July 20. It’s an age-old story of an eccentric artist struggling to achieve lasting fame and of his discovering a loyal patronage in long-time Baton Rouge resident Shirley Marvin.

Born in New York City in 1928, Noel Rockmore was labeled a child prodigy due to his uncanny talent in art and music. It didn’t take long for Rockmore to make a name for himself. By his twenties, he was seen as a rising star in the New York art world.

The realist painter moved to New Orleans during the abstract expressionist movement in New York. He quickly became enthralled with the lively art scene and architecture of the French Quarter. Rockmore spent the next 20 years commuting between New Orleans and New York while developing his eccentric figurative style in creative obscurity. It was during this time that he began his 35-year-long friendship with Marvin, who is now in her 90s.

Marvin, a political activist and mother of three, lived in Baton Rouge with her now deceased husband, real estate developer Wilbur Marvin. After a fateful encounter with Rockmore at Larry Borenstein’s French Quarter art gallery, Marvin became a longstanding supporter through Rockmore’s furious struggles.

Believing him to be an unrecognized genius, Marvin devoted herself to ensuring his art-world reputation. In the ‘90s, she produced the film Rockmore and secured a retrospective exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The extent of her dedication was not fully perceived until after Hurricane Katrina. In 2006 her son Rich Marvin and his wife Tee discovered over 1,400 works of art and 35 years worth of letters and documentation in a New Orleans storage facility.