Learning to Breathe Again: After Helene, Art Exhibition is ‘A Moving Classroom’

​As the ArtsvilleUSA-supported exhibition A Tale of Two Cities draws to a close on Saturday, Nov. 8, we would like to share an open letter from Stephanie Moore, the Director of the Center for Craft. Moore attended the exhibition's opening weekend on Sept. 12-13 at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts and offers her reflections on the experience below. View the archived virtual exhibition on ArtsvilleUSA.

A year after Helene, the details blur. I vividly remember one image: driving over the French Broad and seeing only the tips of buildings where artist studios and businesses hummed. In the months that followed, I did what executive directors do—steadied my voice, held the line, kept the team moving. We raised and distributed over $1.4 million for artists’ relief and recovery, and I learned the strange skill of caring fiercely while staying just numb enough to function.

When an invitation came to New Orleans for the 20th anniversary of Katrina—an exhibition, A Tale of Two Cities, gathering artists from both disaster regions—I said yes. I needed to listen and learn, and to let the steam out. The show, tucked into the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, opened with two days of talks. I ran into one of our renovation architects, now working on community recovery, a fundraiser helping Bakersville plan its future, collectors, and old Center friends. As part of an artist speaker series, Jeffrey Burroughs from the River Arts District Association spoke—clear, dramatic, powerful—and when our eyes met, the tears finally came. Another artist described finding family photographs floating in a ruined living room and building an installation from them. An urban planner who had lived in both places traced the maps of loss and repair.

The next day became a moving classroom: a gallery owner who kept the lights on as waters rose, a visionary who opened an arts nonprofit for young people anchoring purpose in the 7th Ward, a preservationist, a curator and jazz fest producer, a podcast host, participating artists, a developer, a poet, and a media ally who understood the economic spine of culture. My shoulders began to drop. The learning and the kindness around it made space for breath.

On the last morning, I walked the French Quarter with the exhibition’s passionate organizer and dear friend, [ArtsvilleUSA founder Louise Glickman], and visited the Historic New Orleans Collection—an archive and research center with exhibition rooms built to hold stories. I learned that we are approaching half of the U.S. population living on the coast, and that as ice melts, wetlands and pieces of this city are shrinking. I thought about water raging down our mountains and water breaking the levees here. Different geographies, same fragility.

I emailed myself a line spoken during the talks to remember: “Even though you’re faced with something in the moment, that doesn’t mean it will be the outcome.” That feels true for us in Western North Carolina. We are, in the wake of Helene, a work in progress—and, thanks to the artists who carried us and the people who stepped in to support, a work still moving forward.

Copy published with permission of Stephanie Moore. All images published with permission of Richard Vallon.