more on it's twilight in America

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: chodge5 () utk edu
Date: September 7, 2005 10:48:08 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] it's twilight in America



The New Orleans Museum of Art survived Katrina due in part through a
skeleton crew that remained behind to protect the collections. The
following story appeared in the Times-Picayune last week. According to
an NPR update this morning, the staff has been forcibly evacuated, but
luckily not before they were able to hire private security guards to  
take
their place. It was so reminiscent of how the museums and archives in
Baghdad were left completely unattended in the midst of chaos and  
looting.

NOMA survives intact
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times- 
Picayune/archives/2005_08.html
By Dante Ramos
and Doug MacCash
Staff Writers

The New Orleans Museum of Art survived Hurricane Katrina and its  
aftermath
without significant damage.

But when Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives arrived in
the area Wednesday, NOMA employees holed up inside the museum were  
left in
a quandary:
FEMA wanted those evacuees to move to a safer location, but there was no
way to secure the artwork inside.

Six security and maintenance employees remained on duty during the
hurricane and were joined by 30 evacuees, including the families of some
employees.

Harold Lyons, a security console operator who stayed on at the museum,
said FEMA representatives were the first outsiders to show up at the
museum in days.

They immediately tried to persuade staffers to leave the building. That
would have left no one to protect the museum
s contents and no one inside the museum had the authority to give that
order, Lyons said as he inspected the grounds.

Museum Director John Bullard was on vacation and assistant Director
Jacquie Sullivan had taken a disabled brother to Gonzales.


We can
t just leave and turn out the lights on the say-so of someone we don
t know,
 Lyons said.

The phones inside the museum had failed. Lyons asked a reporter to  
pass a
message to Sullivan as soon as possible.

Interviewed by telephone, Sullivan said she had been in close contact  
with
emergency management officials all day Wednesday. State Police had
promised to take her back to the museum at 7 a.m. Thursday, she said.

City Park was littered with fallen trees, but evacuees
 cars, clustered around the museum
s walls, were mostly unscathed. The museum itself was spared any wind
damage and floodwaters had not reached the building.

Inside, the museum
s generators whirred away, providing air conditioning to preserve the
priceless artworks inside.

Sullivan said museum workers had taken down some pieces in the Sydney  
and
Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden before the storm.

But a towering modernist sculpture by Kenneth Snelson was reduced to a
twisted mess in the lagoon.





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