Louisiana State Museum - The Presbytere
Recently, my husband and I traveled to New Orleans for a wedding! What a fun city for a party! On our second day, we went to the Louisiana State Museum - The Presbytere. This museum has two main sections: Hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, each on their own floor.
I will say overall, this museum was really beautiful. I could imagine some awesome cocktail hours overlooking the square here!
The first floor provided context and details about when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond. It walks the visitor through the lead-up to New Orleans. Unfortunately, the atrocities that occurred were due to a number of factors. The exhibit highlights the construction, engineering failures of the levees. It seemed as though bad decisions were compounded through more bad decisions (e.g., materials choice, design choices). The lack of preparedness of the groups that should have been prepared (e.g., federal, state, city resources) was astounding. The excuses seemed to range from a lack of resources (people, money) to limited belief that it would actually happen.I was in training the week when the hurricane hit and I do not feel that I remember the high level of impact as much as I would have. It was very illuminating to see the impact and scale. The exhibit ends with an overview on how New Orleans has been rebuilding and how its citizens supported each other in the aftermath of the destruction.
We then went upstairs to the other exhibit, Mardi Gras: It's Carnival Time in Louisiana. This set of exhibits describes the history and many traditions of Mardi Gras. I really liked learning about the krewes -- they reminded me of college fraternities. I found it interesting to learn about the racial undertones the original parades and festivals had.I will also say that I think this museum exhibit is about as close to Mardi Gras as I ever want to be! It just sounds like chaos!
I thought it was interesting that these two exhibits were in the same museum. While the Hurricane Katrina museum does try to end on a positive, it was a bit of a juxtaposition when heading upstairs to learn about the ultimate party (although with a segregated history).
What made these two exhibits as effective as they were was that they were very nicely edited. While they did have a lot of content, it was definitely restrained.
Times visited: 1
Time in museum: 1.5 hrs
Overall: A-
I will say overall, this museum was really beautiful. I could imagine some awesome cocktail hours overlooking the square here!
The first floor provided context and details about when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond. It walks the visitor through the lead-up to New Orleans. Unfortunately, the atrocities that occurred were due to a number of factors. The exhibit highlights the construction, engineering failures of the levees. It seemed as though bad decisions were compounded through more bad decisions (e.g., materials choice, design choices). The lack of preparedness of the groups that should have been prepared (e.g., federal, state, city resources) was astounding. The excuses seemed to range from a lack of resources (people, money) to limited belief that it would actually happen.I was in training the week when the hurricane hit and I do not feel that I remember the high level of impact as much as I would have. It was very illuminating to see the impact and scale. The exhibit ends with an overview on how New Orleans has been rebuilding and how its citizens supported each other in the aftermath of the destruction.
We then went upstairs to the other exhibit, Mardi Gras: It's Carnival Time in Louisiana. This set of exhibits describes the history and many traditions of Mardi Gras. I really liked learning about the krewes -- they reminded me of college fraternities. I found it interesting to learn about the racial undertones the original parades and festivals had.I will also say that I think this museum exhibit is about as close to Mardi Gras as I ever want to be! It just sounds like chaos!
I thought it was interesting that these two exhibits were in the same museum. While the Hurricane Katrina museum does try to end on a positive, it was a bit of a juxtaposition when heading upstairs to learn about the ultimate party (although with a segregated history).
What made these two exhibits as effective as they were was that they were very nicely edited. While they did have a lot of content, it was definitely restrained.
Times visited: 1
Time in museum: 1.5 hrs
Overall: A-
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