The audio interview with co-curator Eric Seifert begins at the conclusion of “Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration,” on view at the Historic New Orleans Collection through January 19, 2025.
Listen here:
We started our conversation there then backtracked because of the unusual way the exhibit concludes. As I wrote in my September 1 story in the New Orleans Advocate | The Times-Picayune (read it here), the exhibit ends in a separate space reserved for reflection, further study, and “Take Action” resources.
“And, if a visitor is so moved, offer feedback about what they’ve seen,” I wrote. “The room is a decompression portal between a just-experienced historical narrative and, down the stairs and out the carriageway, Royal Street.”
In the audio interview, Seiferth recalls that visitors to “Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865,” which was on view in 2015 in the Williams Research Center at HNOC, sought the same kind of decompression. (The exhibit is preserved in virtual form here.)
“There are a couple of experiences that kind of sparked the idea for me,” Seiferth said. “One of them was my experience as a staff member at this museum when we hosted ‘Purchased Lives,’ an amazing exhibition on the domestic slave trade. At that time, I was working records. I was in the Reading Room and the lobby space outside our Reading Room was where the exhibition ended. And every day, people would finish their experience in that exhibition, walk into our Reading Room, and just sit down. It was my job to greet and sign in everybody who came in the door. I’d go over and check on them and people just wanted space. They didn’t want anything more than an opportunity to sit down, breathe, process.”
In addition to Seiferth, the exhibition’s curatorial team includes Kevin T. Harrell, co-curator, and Katherine Jolliff Dunn, curatorial assistant. Cecilia Moscardó is HNOC’s exhibition designer.
Here are some images courtesy of HNOC that accompany the interview/tour, including the introductory graphic, the title wall, the 1821 lithograph, the Code Noir, the 1898 Louisiana constitution, photos of incarcerated laborers, and the “One Big Self” photos:
At the top of this post is my photo of the feedback wall in the post-exhibit quiet room.
In addition to the exhibit’s reflection-room coda, HNOC is encouraging visitors to further explore the “Captive State” subject matter in a number of ways:
- A 90-minute guided tour of the exhibit is offered three days a week. The “Piecing it Together” tour is a dialogic exercise intended to engage visitors in a conversation about incarceration’s past and present as well as its impact on society.
- On Sept. 19 and 21, HNOC will host Never Fight a Shark in Water: The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright. A one-man play performed by Bright and written and directed by Lara Naughton, the work documents his wrongful conviction and exoneration after 27 years in prison. Other public programming is planned for the duration of the exhibit.
- “Grace Before Dying,” an exhibit of photographs by Lori Waselchuk, is on view along with “Captive State.” The photos, made between 2006 and 2008, document the hospice program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where nearly 90 percent of the prison’s population is serving sentences exceeding 50 years.
Thanks as always for reading and maybe listening. (As noted last time, I’ve begun loading the audio interview to a few podcast platforms, including here.)
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