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INSURANCE, ART, AND ITS PROTECTORS
Protocol of an Unusual Rescue: Hurricane Threatened New Orleans Museum and its Contents
by Lisa Zeitz
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Sept. 25, 2005
Germany, September, 2005
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Toxic sludge is settling on the land, a slimy sheen of oil is adding to the pollution, and thousands of dogs are roaming the debris and stench of the streets.
The conditions are still chaotic, families separated, and many people are on the flight for a second time - first escaping Katrina from New Orleans, and now leaving Houston to who knows where.
The damage to the city's culture cannot be assessed yet. New Orleans has been one of world's most interesting artistic hot spots. Its unique history made for a unique mix of people, and a very lively culture. World famous are its music scene, its inimitable jazz funerals, Mardi Gras, Voodoo, its cuisine, its parades and costumes that combined Afro-American, French and Native American elements. The city has to get back on its feet for the claims to be assessed. There are the lost lives and the hardships that hundreds of thousands of people have been enduring, but Katrina also caused losses - some of them irreplaceable - within the architectural and artistic treasures, its libraries and archives.
AXA Art Insurance, the New York affiliate of the Parisian insurance giant AXA, found itself in the eye of the storm. To face the imminent danger to the important New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), it proved initiative and originality. It would have been desireable to see the same kind of engagement from the government under Bush for the conference center and the Superdome, which were sinking into anarchy and misery. From one day to the next, the New York art experts hired heavily armed paramilitary troops, discussed their "license to kill", chartered helicopters, and procured generators. "We did not shoot anyone", says Barbara Madrigal, in charge of claims at AXA, "but we did rescue a cat."
AXA not only insures the collection of the museum, but also many private collectors, galleries and some artists' studios in the affected area. Just from private collections the company is expecting claims of around twenty million dollars. The institutions carry even more weight: The hurricane destroyed Beauvoir with its residence of the Southern hero Jefferson Davis, dating from 1852. Important parts of his documents and the library are destroyed. Chubb, the main rival to AXA Art, did not want to comment, when this newspaper was inquiring about the consequences of Katrina. The eccentric collection of George Ohr (1857 - 1918), the "Mad Potter of Biloxi" , is also insured with AXA. Just recently Frank Gehry added a celebrated new wing to the museum in Biloxi, Mississippi. Christiane Fischer, CEO of AXA Art Insurance, was shocked when she saw images of the museum in the media: the storm had flung a casino barge into Gehry's building. Historical parts of the museum were also destroyed. She was relieved when a call from Biloxi reached her with the question where best to store the ceramics. In expectation of the move into the new wing all the pieces had been packed into a boxes, where they withstood the disaster unharmed. They are now stored in the museum in Mobile, Alabama.
The New Orleans Museum of Art, dating from 1911 and later enlarged, sits proudly on a slight hill in the affluent North West of the city and greets visitors with a classicist portico. Museum director John Bullard put the value of its 40 000 objects at around 250 to 300 million Dollars. Among them are masterpieces by Edgar Degas, who lived in New Orleans for a few months in 1871/72, and works by Braque, Kandinsky, Picasso, Miro, as well as Old Masters and Contemporary art, photography, African, Native American, Oceanic and Asian Art. The first 100 million Dollars are covered by the insurance. Especially valuable are three diamond studded Fabergé eggs (in pocket format), that Bullard estimated at ten million Dollars each when he spoke to the press, a hair raising statement for the AXA crisis squad: With no electricity at the museum, and for some time no guards at all, the museum was in no way immune to looting.
On Monday, August 29, the hurricane hit the Gulf coast. On Tuesday, there was talk of flood waters, mass looting and anarchy in New Orleans. It was, says Christiane Fischer, very problematic to get in touch with anyone in the region after the storm. Museum director John Bullard was on vacvation in Maine; Deputy Director Jacqueline Sullivan was evacuated in a convent in Texas. Mobile phones worked sometimes in the evenings, not during the day.
On Wednesday, August 31, Fischer and her crisis squad in New York - Vivian Ebersman, Barbara Madrigal, and Ernie Riefenhauser - hired ten heavily armed men of the private security firm Blackwater, to check on the buildings of the private collectors and the galleries in the French Quarter. The headquarters of the security firm are in North Carolina. Many of them their employees are in Iraq. It was four Blackwater men, a year ago, whose charred bodies were hung from a bridge there, to the cheers of the population. Also, twelve men from the International Investigative Group, a New York firm, were sent to the museum in New Orleans, under the leadership of Daniel Ribacoff, equipped with M-16 machine guns, pistols, life rafts, flashlights, binoculars, and food for weeks. Many of them are former New York police officers.
On the weekend just before the storm hit, six museum employees, among them a janitor and a secretary, found shelter in the museum with their families and friends, 39 people all in all. They put artworks in the basement on stools, brought most of the pieces from the ground floor to the second floor, and removed paintings from the vicinity of skylights. The danger of possible looting seemed under control. For their own supply they filled every available container with water, from the cup in the cafeteria to the dust bin. After the storm - which, as was found out later, claimed only a skylight, electricity and canalization - the families resisted the National Guard to stay in the museum. However, on Friday, September 2nd, they were forced to evacuate. Apparently they were led to a bridge where they had to wait for three days before they were picked up. Nobody knows where they are now.
For a few days the museum, isolated on its flood-surrounded hill, was deserted - to the dismay of the insurance company. Ribacoff's twelve men had great difficulties to come even near the museum. With the high waters their boats proved to high to pass under interstate highways. Later they found a "semi passable" route with water levels only at around three to four feet. AXA ordered an amphibian vehicle in Texas.
The military forced helicopters to land before they got anywhere. For days, bodies were washed up near the museum. "It is a literal WAR ZONE." says Ribacoff in an e-mail to Fischer, his men "were advised that there is a 6pm curfew and that anyone out after that is at risk of being fired upon by the military." On Sunday, September 4th he writes that his men again could not reach the museum "the police would not allow us to take a civilian (Jackie Sullivan) out with us, as the civil unrest was great. ... Hoodlums were opening fire on civilians and uniformed Police. In fact, 5 criminals were killed by the Police. ... Lifesaving missions have taken priority."
Finally, on Monday, September 5th, one week after the storm, a Deputy Director Sullivan can inspect the museum. Among the troops, fer commitment had earned her the nickname "Rambo". A sigh of relief at AXA: Nothing was looted. The sculpture garden with its fifty works has some landscaping damage, and lost one sculpture. Every year the park attracted around 300 000 visitors for a stroll along the paths to enjoy the art and a pond with pedestrian bridges and old oaks, magnolias and camelias. The works under the open sky include bronzes by Aristide Maillol and Henry Moore, sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz and Claes Oldenburg. The American artist Kenneth Snelson, born in 1927, had erected his 1981 "Virlane Tower" from steel tubes with hardly visible cables. It seemed to defy gravity, until Katrina hit. Not only were trees uprooted, the storm also toppled over the sculpture and threw the 45 feet structure into the pond. No damages were reported on Fernando Botero's bronze "Mother and Child", Henry Moore's "Reclining Mother and Child" and Louise Bourgeois' bronze spider.
Further inspection a week after the storm also reveals that the basement of the museum is wet, because the groundwater is seeping into the rooms. Generators are urgently needed now, to get pumps and dehydrators to work. The high temperatures and the humidity cater to the next imminent danger - mold. In the meantime, Ribacoff sends his messages: "Our convoy engaged the services of locals with chain saws to proceed via Esplanade towards the Museum... There was still gunfire in the area, so the helicopter was used to provide air support, as two agents with M-16 assault weapons where placed in the helicopter, to provide aerial cover fire.... Truly a para-military operation." Some time during these days they rescued the cat. His review of the situation on Saturday, September 10th: "Access was denied to two Generals, who wanted to tour the Museum, as we did not want anyone else to observe the contents of the Museum for security reasons. ... The two bodies in the vicinity of the Museum remain, even though they were reported to authorities earlier during the week." Yet the most important news for AXA on that day: generators have been installed, the air conditioning is working. Within the anarchy of New Orleans the museum has become an autarkic island of safety. From now on, art from other parts is finding refuge here.
Even if New Orleans will order another mandatory evacuation, the twelve men under Ribacoff have permission to stay there for now, in the service of the insurance company. Who knows what happens if hurricane Rita hits Houston hard and the National Guard has to leave New Orleans? What if Rita is causing more damage right here? "Yes, we want to protect art" says Fischer, "but we also have to look at the bottom line. We spent at least half a million dollars, but what is that compared to the potential loss?"
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