Book of the Living: The house museums of New Orleans

# · ✸ 11 · 💬 2 · one year ago · harpers.org · prismatic · 📷
Lewis's museum, like another, the Backstreet Cultural Museum, run by Sylvester Francis, was dedicated to the Mardi Gras Indians, the all-black societies known for their elaborate suits of beads and feathers. The museum's subjects were the black denizens of New Orleans who were free during French, Spanish, and American rule before the Civil War, ranging from black artisans and artists to activists such as Homer Plessy, of Plessy v. Ferguson. The couple's second museum, the George and Leah McKenna Museum of African-American Art, showcases works from the diaspora in a grand white home in the Garden District. In June 2020, a group of former museum employees, under the name #DismantleNOMA, published an open letter accusing museum administrators and senior staff of directing racist and homophobic slurs at employees, imposing racist dress codes, and perpetuating substantial racialized pay gaps. In recent years, Omar's Katrina museum caught the attention of professors in the museum studies graduate program at the Southern University at New Orleans, and he was invited to apply. Fari Nzinga, an anthropologist and a co-creator of #DismantleNOMA who'd held a prestigious fellowship at NOMA from 2014 to 2016, said that the museum wasn't unique in its culture and practices, but that it seemed extraordinary in its disregard for its community and the artistic production of black New Orleanians, on whose reputation and labor the museum depends. As for the house museums, Nzinga said it was clear that major New Orleans establishments "Haven't given two shits." If they had, they would have supported them, sharing resources, tools, practices.
Book of the Living: The house museums of New Orleans



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