The Cost of Katrina

We all filter experiences through our personal knowledge, and because of my profession, I started to wonder about the museums of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I've always loved the Crescent City for the depth of its history and its unfettered individuality. Doing the calculations on what has been lost is saddening.

Of course, it hardly needs to be said that losing a bunch of old stuff is not equivalent to human suffering. I'm outraged over the conditions we have allowed people to suffer through, and have been doing what I can to ameliorate them through donations and contacting my political represenatives. But I think once we have begin to care for the hurricane's victims, the loss of the 'stuff' of New Orleans will also be worth grieving over.

In preserving their collections, museums are trying to ensure that a story will not be forgotten; that it will extend beyond the span of living memory, limited so by our short, fragile human lives. They are our line cast into the future, our statement of what we believe is valuable, meaningful, beautiful, frightening, or otherwise worth preserving. There is a certain, different sort of sadness when museum collections are lost. It is the loss of memory, the loss of evidence, the loss of our statement that here, we believe, is something so important it should not be ignored or forgotten.

In my mind, I've been roving all over the New Orleans I remember so well wondering how certain spots have fared. An early thought was for the Audubon Zoo. Although
they had a disaster plan, and it probably looked good in theory, it makes some rueful reading right now. It was clearly inadequate to the conditions of Katrina. Then I started reflecting on all the other collections lost -- things loved and treasured, documents, library archives, textiles, family mementoes, architecture, musical recordings, masks and costumes, oral history recordings -- things curators and conservators and have labored to preserve from the wear of simple time. To have all of that intention, thought, love and work wiped out in a day is a profound indication of the fragility of all human endeavors.

I almost hesitate to post these thoughts, because if I were someone else reading them, I might say "But what about the people?" They are foremost in my thoughts, and I believe we need to have an honest and serious national discussion of federal priorities, and to examine how it is that we have allowed so many people to become so poor, neglected, and dismissed that they are now utterly without a safety net. WE also need to understand what went wrong, and why, in this age of supposed preparation for terrorism and global catastrophe, we could not manage to evacuate a city. Most of that is best addressed in its own discussion.

But the role of museums in this situation will not be an unimportant one. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have given America some of the most deeply etched characteristics of our cultural identity. The region is one repository of the memory of some of our nation's most difficult struggles, some of our earliest roots as a global tradeport, some of our most astoundingly vibrant cultural creations. Famous for its food, music, architecture, language communities, folklore, and sense of place; examined for its class issues, racial relations, experiments with engineering, efforts toward preservation; and loved for the lagniappe it added to everyday life, NoLa -- along witht the entire Gulf Coast -- is one of the places Americans go to learn who we are.

In his op-ed in today's New York Times, S. Frederick Starr describes his own neighborhood and the losses that are likely there. Here is how he puts it:

Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, is a living archive of American social and cultural history, and not just in its buildings. In no other state is the proportion of people born and raised within its borders so high. As a consequence, they are something that is ever more rare in a homogenized and suburbanized America: the living bearers and transmitters of their own history and culture. Katrina, and those fateful levee breaks in New Orleans, put this all at risk.

Are these cultural contributions something we can remember and rebuild? Who will return to New Orleans to piece it back together? Will its spirit remain? What becomes of the stories of this city in the face of the diaspora now taking place? How can we deal with the loss of the elderly who died here, who had no opportunity to share their biography, or entrust their memories to safekeeping? At this point, no one can know. The first order of business is to feed, house, and employ the thousands upon thousands of escapees. The next question is: what will be left for museums to preserve?

For more on museums affected by Katrina, please check AAM's page of Katrina reports. The ALA also offers a page on how libraries have been affected. Richard Waterhouse, executive director of the Southeastern Museums Conference, has established a fund for museums affected by Hurricane Katrina. Checks should be made payable to SEMC with 'Hurricane Katrina Fund' noted in the memo field. The mailing address is SEMC, P.O. Box 9003, Atlanta, GA 31106. The SEMC board will make decisions regarding distribution of the funds.