As New Orleans clears blighted Algiers apartment complex, it also loses a major artwork
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DeGaulle Manor, the site of Exhibit BE, in the process of being torn down June 17. Photo: Chelsea Brasted/Axios
Construction workers have been slowly dismantling one of New Orleans' largest blighted properties since the end of May, crumbling apart the long-shuttered DeGaulle Manor apartment complex in Algiers.
Why it matters: The removal helps out Algiers neighbors who have complained about the complex for years, but also wipes out one of New Orleans' most impactful modern artworks.
The big picture: DeGaulle Manor is on Mayor LaToya Cantrell's "Dirty Dozen" list of blighted properties, which city officials are working to remove.
- On Monday, the complex was visible through cleared spots within thickets of overgrown trees and brambles tangled with trash. Parts of the building had already come down, and muddy tracks from dump trucks sketched lines into and out of the property.
Zoom in: DeGaulle Manor was the site of Brandan "BMIKE" Odums' "Exhibit BE," a late 2014 street art installation that served as an extension of his post-Katrina Project BE work.
- With "Exhibit BE," Odums invited 35 street artists to transform the sweeping views of the abandoned apartment complex into a cacophony of color and art.
- Ogden Museum of Southern Art curator Bradley Sumrall told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that "Exhibit BE" was "a masterpiece of renegade collaborative urban expressionism."
- Over three months, Odums says, 30,000 people visited the space, and its wrap party included a show with Erykah Badu, David Banner, Dead Prez and Trombone Shorty.
- The project also brought Odums' career — and New Orleans art — into national focus.
Yes, but: "Exhibit BE" was never intended to last forever.
- "We weren't able to hold [the property] owners accountable and turn it into something," Odums told me for The Times-Picayune in 2018. "As a spectacle, it was something amazing, but I don't like the fact that ... years later, it still is in the condition it was in."
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