A wall of ruined dresser drawers eight feet high by 100 feet long doesn't sound like a showstopper of a museum exhibit.
BUT WHEN YOU REALIZE that all these wrecked remnants of ruined furniture are the remnants of people's homes -- and lives -- wrecked when New Orleans' levees gave way during Hurricane Katrina, well, the emotion washes over you like the dirty water did that benighted city. Powerful stuff, particularly as the people behind the wall of debris tell their own stories via a sound system hidden in the wall.
It's called "Floodwall," and it's on display for a couple more days at the Louisiana State Museum, across the street from the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. I could prattle on, but I suppose the artist behind the project, Jana Napoli, better can tell the story of the art she salvaged from trash piles outside flood-wrecked homes all across the New Orleans area:
BUT WHEN YOU REALIZE that all these wrecked remnants of ruined furniture are the remnants of people's homes -- and lives -- wrecked when New Orleans' levees gave way during Hurricane Katrina, well, the emotion washes over you like the dirty water did that benighted city. Powerful stuff, particularly as the people behind the wall of debris tell their own stories via a sound system hidden in the wall.
It's called "Floodwall," and it's on display for a couple more days at the Louisiana State Museum, across the street from the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. I could prattle on, but I suppose the artist behind the project, Jana Napoli, better can tell the story of the art she salvaged from trash piles outside flood-wrecked homes all across the New Orleans area: “Having to throw your furniture out in front of your house -- your life is sort of taken from you and sort of dumped out in your front yard.” . . . “New Orleans was here before America was here and we are a part of America.”
(snip)
"We were driven to create a wailing wall that builds intimate and homely detritus from a world destroyed into a wrenching cry of grief," said Ms. Napoli. "This emotional endeavor quickly grew into a sculptural and historical work allowing the people of New Orleans to tell their own story about what they value and why.”
I THINK NAPOLI achieved her objective with this amazing combination of historical salvage, art and oral history. If you can get there in the next couple of days, go to the Louisiana State Museum and do yourself a big favor.
And speaking of the year-old museum just off the capitol grounds, I'll just say that I thought it would be a fine museum, but I was shocked at exactly how good it is. If I had had more time, I could have spent the whole day there . . . and I would have, too.
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