The New Orleans Mint was once a US Mint, and the main mint of the South. Today it is a museum, showing the minting machinery, coins, and a jazz collection and a performing arts center. The Mint's museum operations are currently still limited in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, formerly the National D-Day Museum, is focused on World War II and D-Day and the early invasion of German-occupied France especially, as well as the Pacific islands theater (there are a few reasons such a museum is in New Orleans, but one of them is that World War II historian Stephen Ambrose lived here). Exhibits include air and land craft, and landing craft, items and exhibits on the home front, the front line, the planning of the invasions, and related subjects. The museum also sponsors an old-fashioned board and miniatures wargaming convention, The Heat of Battle Convention.

The Confederate Memorial Hall Museum is dedicated to the history and presentation of the US Civil War, mainly the Confederate side of the war, and particularly the Louisiana effort.

The Louisiana State Museum is both a museum and a collection of museums. Much of the Louisiana State Museum is in the French Quarter, next to Jackson Square, in a few buildings including The Cabildo, the Old Louisiana State Arsenal, and the Presbytere, and several other old buildings around the area. Most of these have one or two floors of exhibits on Louisiana state history subjects, are in historic buildings, or both.

The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, not in the French Quarter but in downtown, is a multidisciplinary arts museum and active art creation center with several educational programs for adults, teens, and children.

New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), in City Park, is one of the oldest art museums in the area, featuring accomplished local Louisiana, national American, and various international artists, including a wide variety of paintings, photographs, sculptures, and other art. NOMA hosts art classes for kids, and events for adults.

Other museums in the New Orleans area include the Newcomb Art Gallery, mainly focused on decorative arts; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, mainly focused on art from the Southern states. Not all of the local museums are about art: there are also food museums, including the Museum of the American Cocktail and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, both with active participation - you can taste the exhibits. The New Orleans African American Museum preserves items and works and history of African Americans in Louisiana, and the New Orleans Jazz Museum keeps items related to jazz musicians, and music of jazz artists.

The Audubon Nature Institute is a family of museums, many in Audubon Park, but others around the area. Audubon Park hosts the Institute itself, and the Audubon Zoo. The Audubon Insectarium and Butterfly Garden and Aquarium of the Americas are on the south side of the French Quarter, near the Mississippi.

The Audubon Zoo is somewhat small, but has both exotics - tigers, elephants, monkeys, and other animals from overseas - and domestics - alligators and other animals found in the Americas, and a good sized Aviary, with birds from around the world. The animals at this zoo are mainly ones well suited to the local climate.

The Audubon Insectarium is the largest insectarium and entomology (bug) museum in the USA, and features a great many exhibits and displays for kids and adults on insect life, anatomy, and impact, and includes a Bug Appetite demonstration on edible insects.