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2024. 3. 29


[¹Ì¼úÀϹÝ] New Orleans Museum Reckon
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Æ®·¢¹é http://www.artiaco.com/home/bbs/tb.php/artnews/1395
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Years After Katrina,
 
New Orleans Museums
 
Reckon With Recovery
 
Inside
    Photo
    Casey Parkinson¡¯s ¡°Transcendence,¡± part of ¡°Reverb: Past, Present, Future¡± at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.Credit William Widmer for The New York Times

    NEW ORLEANS — How well do you remember the last days of August 10 years ago? Asked that question, a 23-year-old New Orleanian writes of seeing a dead alligator on the highway, having nowhere to sleep and crying every night. This anonymous recollection, printed neatly on a card, is part of a growing number pinned to the basement walls of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art here.

    As the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures draws near, the city of New Orleans will again make room to process its collective trauma, resilience and the work of rebuilding that continues. Some will turn to family, neighbors, friends; still others bars, churches and restaurant tables. How, too, can museums and contemporary art help people think critically and constructively about the post-Katrina decade?

    Having lived in the city only five and a half years, I don¡¯t have these searing memories of my own, but their individual heat still burns the ears of anyone willing to listen. I came to the city as an arts writer, someone who wanted to hear and to look closely at the vibrant and vital art making happening among artist collectives, in museums, galleries and community centers, and on the streets every day. I ended up an editor, curator and organizer — as much a participant as an observer of art¡¯s function to help people draw meaning.

    The three major visual arts venues in the city — the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Contemporary Arts Center — have all timed exhibitions of living artists to coincide with the anniversary. Each show is distinct in its approach, its tone, and its way of visualizing the role of art and the idea of memorialization itself.

    Continue reading the main story Slide Show
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    The Artists Behind the Exhibitions

    The Artists Behind the Exhibitions

    CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times

    The New Orleans Museum of Art¡¯s exhibition ¡°Ten Years Gone,¡± is by far the most conceptual and the only one not to limit itself to artists from the region. Its power lies in its sense of abstraction, its unlikely pairings, its insistent underscoring of universal themes. A nuanced and emotionally sensitive show, it was nevertheless panned in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, in which the critic Doug MacCash lamented the absence of Katrina-specific imagery and called it ¡°too orderly, dry and off target.¡± His review inadvertently raises the question, whose target?

    Organized by Russell Lord, the museum¡¯s curator of photographs, prints and drawings, the exhibition features in-depth bodies of work by six artists, three of whom have significant ties to New Orleans. ¡°I wanted to ask the question, What do smart, visually engaged artists have to say, not about Hurricane Katrina, not about Sept. 11, not about any specific tragedy, but about the act of memorialization in general?¡± Mr. Lord said in an interview. Each successive body of work in ¡°Ten Years Gone¡± complicates this question, perhaps none more so than a series of video vignettes by the Toronto artist Spring Hurlbut.

    Photo
    A detail from Spring Hurlbut¡¯s video piece ¡°Airborne¡± (2008).Credit William Widmer for The New York Times

    In ¡°Airborne¡± (2008), Ms. Hurlbut wears a respirator mask as she releases cremated human remains, including those of her deceased father, into a blackened room. The only visual clues that these dancing particles are in fact ashes are the names that flash on screen before the opening of each new container. ¡°Mary¡± is a big boisterous cloud that expands in every direction. ¡°Trudy¡± is quick to rise and dissipate, but then lingers, kicking up in sporadic bursts. It¡¯s hard not to ascribe personalities to these improvisational performances, and in doing so the viewer is caught in an act of psychological projection, an inherently human vulnerability, like watching inkblots float into the ether.