High Art at the McKenna Museum
The McKenna Museum, by collecting the works of African-American artists throughout history under one roof, demonstrates that they form a distinct and ongoing lineage—a singular canon of black art driven by diverse experiences and visions.
Commerce & Capitalism
The story of commerce in New Orleans is the story of New Orleans, an epic poem told in polyrhythmic and multilingual verses. At its center is the marketplace, where New Orleanians have always gone to negotiate fiercely for power and prosperity.
La Decadencia: Interview with Piki Mendizabal
The movement of the water and its mysterious sound is the natural force most represented in my work.
The Ship
I can smell it already. I have yet to go aboard, but it’s in the air: pungent, nectarous, rotting bread fruit, ripening papaya. I don’t know it yet, but it is a scent that will linger, in various degrees of intensity, for months; an olfactory tissue, the city sinewed with the islands. I walk up the gangplank and look out across the inlet. There, spewing sweet smoke, through ancient brick stacks, is the Domino Sugar refinery. I am young and green, and the ship old and weatherbeaten, but we get along quite well, especially after I figure out things like bow, stern, port, starboard, mess. The Sam G. is no QE2: the decks are decrepit, the hallways malodorous dungeons, the johns putrid cubicles. It’s all grime, rust, peeling paint, cold steel. But this is no time for first impressions. I’ve come to get lost. I climb aboard.
Never out of ideas
I like for art to have a broad appeal-art for the people. I want it to be real. I want it on the down low.
Start Digging: Interview with Fred Sipp
That dream come directly from God. God knows what you need, and God helps those who try to help themselves. He sent me to New Orleans.
Defending the Collective: An Interview with Malik Rahim
From his days organizing with the Black Panther Party in the Desire Projects, to co-founding the Common Ground Collective, Malik’s brilliance as a community organizer lies in the simplicity of his model: gather any and all available resources, do the necessary work no matter how unglamorous it may be, and honor and protect one another like your life depends on it.
Horror Vacui: Douglas Bourgeois
For Douglas Bourgeois, art is something everyone can know; it belongs to anyone with an eye for the spectacular. “Art is an open secret,” as he puts it, though it must be said that no one tells the secret quite like he does.
