SUNO Works to Restore its Collection of African Art
NEW ORLEANS
Even after fetid floodwater receded from the Southern University at New Orleans’ campus, the soggy artifacts in its collection of African art marinated for months in dark, dank buildings.
Intricate patterns carved on a drum were barely visible beneath a film of mold. Mold had blackened raffia that sprouted like hair from tribal masks, and it had eaten away at shackles and chains in a plastic storage chest that was full to the brim with a thick, viscous, yellow-brown broth.
“I wasn’t putting my hand in there,” Linda Hill, the collection’s curator, says of that box. “I love what I do, but this was beyond me.”
On some pieces, mold colonies grew straight up, looking like wispy weeds.
“I never knew mold could grow like that,” Hill says. “This was science-fiction mold.”
Water from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which flooded the Pontchartrain Park campus to depths of 11 feet, knocked pottery and masks off their shelves and managed to invade Plexiglas display cases.
As a result, Hill says, about 28 percent of the 1,000-piece collection was deemed unsalvageable.
