Museums, Disasters, and Resilience: The Presbytère\u27s Living with Hurricanes—Katrina and Beyond Exhibit

This research project focuses on the entanglement of cultural heritage, museums, disasters, and resilience. Using The Presbytère museum\u27s exhibit, Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond as a case study, I critically examined who is represented in the exhibit and how, what roles museum professionals and New Orleans community members held in the exhibit construction, and visitors\u27 insight on the exhibit content. I argue that the promotion of New Orleans\u27 culture and recovery post-Katrina throughout the exhibit has promoted the overall image of New Orleans and her residents as resilient. Framed by a variety of academic fields, this research contributes to a growing body of knowledge and interdisciplinary literature on disaster mitigation, the importance of culture to recovery, the benefits of and restrictions to incorporating the New Museology into common museological practice, as well as the changing functions and purposes of museums in the new millennia