[CPProt.net] Museums tally the cultural damage wrought by flooding

Mon Sep 5 05:09:28 CEST 2005

Museums tally the cultural damage wrought by flooding  
By Daniel J. Wakin The New York Times

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2005

The hurricane and the flood that followed took their toll on the cultural
riches of New Orleans and the cities in its orbit.

Museum directors were still struggling to gain a clear picture of the extent
of losses, but some collections seem to have been spared, including the core
holdings of the New Orleans Museum of Art, one of the region's most
important.

The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, which has the world's largest
jazz oral history collection, appeared to be safe, said the curator, Bruce
Raeburn. Preservation Hall, the 255-year-old French Quarter building that
serves as a jazz shrine and performance venue, appears to be undamaged.
However, the roof of the Old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter was damaged,
raising concern for the state of its jazz collection, which includes musical
instruments, film footage, posters and photographs.

Seven staff members of the New Orleans Museum of Art, including security
guards and engineers, stayed behind Tuesday to protect the collection and
were presumably there through the week, said E. John Bullard, the museum's
director.

The Times-Picayune newspaper reported that about 30 members of families of
museum staff members had sought refuge in the building, which is on high
ground at the edge of City Park. It said the staff members had refused to
leave the building untended when urged to leave by officials of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, who arrived Wednesday.

Bullard, who was vacationing in Maine, said Friday that he had heard nothing
more.

"The ones who stayed are really the heroes for the museum," he said.

The museum, which has about 40,000 objects in its collection, has a
prominent group of Miro works and other paintings, 16,000 pieces of glass,
and major photography holdings. It has an important African collection, and
about 100 of the best pieces from it are on tour right now.

Bullard, who has been director of the museum since 1973, feared for an
outdoor sculpture garden established two years ago containing 55 works,
including pieces by Henry Moore, Louise Bourgeois and Claes Oldenburg. 

A 45-foot-tall steel tube and cable sculpture by Kenneth Snelson, "Virlane
Tower," which was valued at more than $500,000, was smashed, The
Times-Picayune said. The other major concern was basement storage spaces.
There was only enough fuel for the emergency generators, which operate sump
pumps and climate control systems, to last until the middle of last week.

If water invades and the pumps fail, thousands of photographs and prints
could be threatened. 

"Hopefully the items in the cabinets would gently rise up or maybe just stay
on the shelves," he said.

Bullard said the museum's insurers had dispatched private security guards
from Florida in two campers to protect the artwork and seek out fuel to keep
the generators going. The next task would be to transport important artworks
out of the city when roads were passable.

"This is a transforming event in a city's life," he said. "Even though New
Orleans has been around for 200 years, I wonder whether it can survive."

The failure of climate control systems in other surviving museums poses a
danger, said Ed Able, president of the American Association of Museums in
Washington. Able said 126 institutions - art museums, historic buildings,
zoos, aquariums and others - lay within the affected zone.

"All in all, we've got definite collection damage across the affected
areas," he said. Added to that were fears that dozens of small and tenderly
cared for historic houses - blips on the nation's cultural radar but
important parts of the Gulf region's identity - had been smashed into
oblivion.

 The hurricane and the flood that followed took their toll on the cultural
riches of New Orleans and the cities in its orbit.