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A painting by the British graffiti master Banksy will appear at the Louisiana State Museum at the Presbytère starting Aug. 29, marking the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the resultant flood, museum officials announced Monday.
The painting will be displayed on the 5,000-pound section of brick wall where it was painted.
Banksy, the most famous artist of the 21st century, paid a clandestine visit to New Orleans in 2008, when he painted more than a dozen small murals at unexpected sites across the city. The intention of the secretive artist was apparently to boost morale and attract art-loving visitors to the city as it slogged through its long recovery.
Many of Banksy’s murals had Katrina themes. But the painting on the side of a former firehouse in the 500 block of Jackson Avenue was a bit different from most. In it, Banksy expressed his disdain for New Orleans’ famous graffiti eradicator known as the Gray Ghost. He depicted the Gray Ghost as a monster mercilessly attacking a defenseless stick figure.
In April the process had begun to remove a 2008 painting by the British graffiti superstar Banksy from the wall of of a 19th-century fire station on Jackson Avenue
Banksy’s New Orleans paintings, each of which may have been worth tens of thousands of dollars, met various fates. Some were vandalized; others were painted over, stolen, demolished with the buildings that held them, or removed and preserved.
The Jackson Avenue Banksy survived longer than any other in its original location, though it suffered from vandals and the weather. In mid-July, Jaohn Orgon, the owner of the building, had a section of the wall that held the painting cut out and trucked away to painting restorer Elise Grenier.
By some definitions, the mural is not graffiti per se, since Banksy asked for permission from the building’s owners Orgon and restaurateur Greg Surrey before painting.
On July 15, a work by renowned English graffiti artist Banksy was cut from the wall of a historic fire station in the Irish Channel neighborhood and trucked away by the owner of the property
The Banksy will be part of the Enhanced Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond exhibit, an update of the 2010 Presbytère Museum exhibit of artifacts and exhibitions, including what they call a state-of-the-art panoramic visual experience.
When the doors to the exhibit open Aug. 29, there will be four original Banksys on display in New Orleans. Two can be found in the lobby of the International House Hotel, at 221 Camp St., and another is on display in the Habana Outpost restaurant, at 1040 Esplanade Ave.
The Louisiana State Museum at the Presbytère is at 751 Chartres St. on Jackson Square. For more information, visit the LSM website.
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