New Orleans art survives, but Biloxi museum is damaged

[KamaAina]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/06/DDG2PEHMUN1.DTL

Few people who do not live in the Deep South think of New Orleans as a hub of the visual arts, though many working artists live there. The city's Warehouse Arts District boasted about 50 galleries, but none of national reputation.

So far the major reported art casualty of Hurricane Katrina has been a spindly abstract metal sculpture by Kenneth Snelson that stood outside the New Orleans Museum of Art. Snelson makes open structures of aluminum cylinders held in place by taut wire cables. The New Orleans Museum staff successfully secured three other sculptures that had sat on the institution's grounds.

According to the Web site of the American Association of Museums, the New Orleans Museum and its holdings, the Snelson aside, survived the hurricane undamaged. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that six museum employees remained inside the museum during the storm, concerned for the safety of its collections.

After they refused to leave at the behest of federal emergency personnel, some of their family members and a few other evacuees joined them in the building. Although the phone system stopped working, the museum's emergency generator continued to function, ensuring the climate control that fragile artworks require.

This is amazing! The N.O. Museum of Art is located in City Park, one of the lowest-lying areas in the city, and not far from the breach at the 17th St. Canal. I had feared for its contents, including a nice collection of Faberge eggs, but most importantly some paintings by Impressionist Edgar Degas, who lived and painted in la Nouvelle-Orleans for a year while visiting relatives. Ask yourself (unless you live in Paris): How many Impressionists ever painted in your city?

edit: caps

[Hissyspit]

1. Major museums are built as enclosed environments in some ways...

so it is not altogether surprising.

[enlightenment]

2. I am relieved -- though feeling guilty about worrying about

things when living creatures are suffering.
My great-great grandfather was a well-known art dealer in NO in the decades before the Civil War. He also painted, mostly portraits, miniatures, and miscellaneous -- as well as lithographs. Not known by today's world, of course, as he was just a minor light. Still, some of his work is probably hanging in peoples homes -- somebody's ancestor or something.
Art, in all its forms, proves to me that we are more than the sum of our parts. It is important -- and I admit to some despair at the thought that so much beauty has been lost.