Katrina Aid from Wildenstein & Co.

Kudos to Wildenstein & Co., the bluechip New York gallery, for mounting a benefit exhibition for the hurricane-ravaged New Orleans Museum of Art. Comprised of 86 works from NOMA’s European and American collections (14th-21st century), plus 9 additional pieces from private New Orleans collections, the show runs from Nov. 17 to Feb. 9. The admission fee ($10 adults, $5 seniors and students) and the proceeds from opening-night events will go towards the museum’s $15-million Katrina Recovery campaign. No art is for sale.
Wildenstein’s press release provides an additional public service by giving this disturbing update on NOMA’s plight:
According to recent assessments, the flooding following the storm inflicted more than $6,000,000 in damage on NOMA’s physical plant and its adjacent five-acre sculpture garden. The museum’s director, E. John Bullard, its deputy director, Jacqueline Sullivan, and their board of trustees now have to cope with an absolute catastrophe in terms of the financing of their daily operations. Indeed, every day they are faced with the question of their museum’s very survival.
Sources of revenue have been drastically curtailed, as the museum can expect little funding from either the municipal government of New Orleans or the state of Louisiana; both are economically overwhelmed by the realities of physical destruction and population displacement. Some key sources of individual and corporate funding have dried up.
Much of the museum’s membership and its cadre of volunteers are either dispersed or have had to remain inactive. Special events such as exhibitions and docent tours for both adults and children have been seriously affected. Even more alarming is the fact that budgetary constraints required the dismissal of almost eighty-five percent of NOMA’s staff of curators, administrative personnel, photographers, art handlers, guards, gardeners and maintenance workers. The museum is presently operating with little more than a skeleton crew of forty.
Since March 3 of this year, it has been opening its doors to the public free of charge, first for three days a week, more recently for five days. However, attendance so far is only 20% of pre-Katrina levels. For 2005 alone, NOMA incurred a deficit of $700,000, and that type of loss is expected to continue.
Wildenstein deserves thanks both for its own public spiritedness and for keeping the cultural dimension of this disaster before the New York artworld’s consciousness and conscience.
The Getty Foundation as also stepped up to the plate, announcing yesterday more than $1 million in grants to eight New Orleans arts institutions for “conservation and transition planning to assist them as they recover” from Katrina. This first round of the Getty’s planned $2-million New Orleans grant program did not directly benefit NOMA, but included $250,000 to the city’s Contemporary Art Center for “collaborative transition planning” with six other cultural institutions, including NOMA.