For the first time since Hurricane Katrina lashed her hometown, broke its levees and filled 80 percent of its neighborhoods with water from Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans Museum of Art Deputy Director Jackie Sullivan traveled east from Kenner, La., into the quiet and devastated city.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “The color of the sky… I opened up my car windows because I thought I wanted to experience it fully.”

Sullivan, who grew up just steps from the museum, was attempting to get to the three-story 96-year-old neoclassical landmark in New Orleans’ then inundated City Park. It was two days since the National Guard evacuated the 39 people — the handful of NOMA staff and their families — who weathered the storm and protected the priceless contents inside its walls.

“Entering the city, I can say that I hope that I never experience, or anyone else has to experience what…just the smell of the death of the city is like… human beings, all of their property,” she says. “I will remember that always. It’s kind of non-descriptive. You just can’t imagine what it was like.”

The calm
The weekend of Aug. 27- 28, the citizens of New Orleans went through the motions. The people had seen hurricanes before, but not like this. Most rode the dirge together out of town on counter-flowing interstates. Many were unable to leave. Some simply refused to leave because they would rather die in their beloved city than see it mortally washed away or irrepressibly altered. And they were legion. Then there were those, like the 39 in museum, who remained out of duty.

Sullivan left her home in Metairie to stay with her brother, who is handicapped, in Gonzales about 25 miles north.

“I was never going to stay in the building,” she said. “The staff was a responsible one and I have a lot of faith in them. And I never could have brought him (her brother) here.”

Midday Friday, Aug. 26, Sullivan, museum staff, and curators began the routine hurricane preparedness plan. One of Sullivan’s brothers died earlier that week, and she was just returning to work. NOMA Director John Bullard was on vacation in Maine.

“We have a disaster plan for the building, and we have a disaster plan for the (Sydney and Wanda Besthoff Sculpture) Garden and we know what to do with each sculpture,” she said.

Sculptor Henry Moore’s “Reclining Mother and Child,” and “Venus Victorious” by the great Renoir, who turned to sculpture later in life because his arthritis proved too painful to allow him to paint, are two of the more than 50 sculptures located in five-acre garden adjacent to the museum.

“We did not take down the Lin Emery, we just tied it up as we have done many times in the past,” Sullivan said. Lin Emery is a New Orleans-based artist. Her polished aluminum kinetic sculpture, “Wave,” stands in the reflecting pool in front of the museum. During the clean-up, the Oregon National Guard found it under several fallen live oak trees. “They brought it back one morning and said ‘Ms. Sullivan, I think this belongs to you,’” she said. It has since been restored and is back in its rightful place.

“In the building, we have a new hurricane preparedness plan every year, and we get to use it often,” she said.

Sullivan spent much of her time scrubbing trash cans to be used as giant water jugs; “Because if the storm was severe you would need water to flush the toilets,” she said, and shopping for food and toiletries for those who were staying.

Engineers and other staff raised the art stored in the basement off of the floor, stood paintings and sculptures on blocks, placed crates containing art onto pallets and removed paintings hanging near the skylights.

“Saturday morning, we got the whole curatorial staff here and actually, the museum was open,” she said. “The city had not notified us to close so we stayed open”

Just hours before Katrina swept through; the city itself was still open. Stuck out-of-towners with canceled flights drank and revolved at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, or they caroused in the streets of the French Quarter before taking cover inside one of its ancient inns. Meanwhile, Katrina was swirling into a Category 5 monster.

“On Sunday, I came back, and everyone who was going to be here was here with their families, and they brought what they needed to be happy for what they thought was going to be the next three days,” she said. “There was six staff members and their families, a total of 39.”

Feeling comfortable with the situation, Sullivan headed for Gonzales.

“We kept in contact and everything was good, they cooked, the storm came, we knew when the storm was passing, and we still had communications,” she said. “And, of course, then the levees broke.”

The flood
Sullivan stood in the intolerant south Louisiana sun at the split of interstates 10 and 610 for the best part of Monday, Sept. 5. She hoped to travel to the museum by airboat over approximately two miles of the black, stagnant, oil-slicked water that now filled the Mid City neighborhood and City Park.

“We were the last boat in the waterway that day,” she said.

Her captain was a volunteer airboat pilot from the Florida Everglades, and her crew was two New York cops hired as security by AXA, the museum’s principal insurer.

“We rode into the park on the top on trees and bushes, and when we got into (Tad Gormley) stadium, I didn’t know whether we were at the front of the back,” she said. “The museum was an island, the sculpture garden was flooded.”

Two days before the evacuation of the 39 refugees, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had tried to remove them, but they refused to leave.

“They said, ‘No, we won’t leave unless John Bullard or Jackie Sullivan come, we promised them we would stay,’” Sullivan said. “And they did stay.”

After she lost communication with the group — nearly a week before — her only source of information on the condition of the museum was a couple of newspaper reporters.

“The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune had a reporter that somehow contacted the New York Times, and really it was through the newspaper that we kept contact,” she said. “The Times called me in Gonzales, so I knew that the staff was fine, and I also knew that there was no water was in the building. That was late Monday (Aug. 29) early Tuesday.”

Sullivan spent most of that week at the Office of Emergency Preparedness in Baton Rouge, and kept in close contact with the State Police to make sure that the staff had food and water.

“Because it looked like you could be in here for a long time, longer than three days,” she said. “And to make sure nothing happened to the building, particularly the Faberge or the rest of the collection, because we knew the looters had made it to the park. The staff had reported that through the newspaper reporters. That’s how we knew.”

So Sullivan and her guards disembarked on a swampy plot of exposed earth and began apprehensively approaching the museum.

“You heard no noise except for helicopters in the distance,” she said. “The trees were not moving, no animals, no nothing,” she said. “And then as we got to the police cars, we realized that the police were not there. No emergency, no nothing. No one was in the neighborhood.”

It had been over two days since the refugees were ordered to leave. The museum had sat unmanned since. Its generator had roughly 72-hours worth of fuel – meaning it had expired roughly three days previous. And that was to keep emergency lights and security systems functioning, not to keep the building climate controlled.

“We entered the building,” she said, “and it was just as I had left it. The building was pristine, only an extension cord was out of place, which I thought was pretty incredible. We inspected the whole building, and the inner building was still relatively cool. Everything was fine.”

The next few days Sullivan traveled by helicopter from Harahan, just outside of New Orleans, to the museum. It was then they suffered perhaps the worst damage when hydrostatic pressure cracked the floor in the basement allowing three inches of water to fill the bottom level. Besides Emery’s “Wave,” the only other piece of art on the grounds to suffer significant damage was a 40-foot-tall tension tower by California artist Kenneth Snelson called the “Virlane Tower.” Sullivan said it was likely hit by a flying tire during the hurricane.

By Sept. 10, almost two weeks since water rushed through the levees, flooded City Park and turned the museum into an island; power was restored at the venerable art institution.

The return
Sullivan, Bullard and a crew of curators and department heads spent the fall and winter bringing the museum back to speed. And on March 3, the giant bronze doors swung back open after six months shuttered.

Three new exhibitions, a New Orleans-style ribbon cutting gala and a host of performers marked the event. Honored guests Richard Ford, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and PEN-Faulkner Award, and Ernest Gaines, MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Humanities Medal held a colloquium called “Arts, Culture and Louisiana after Katrina & Rita: Now What?”

Over 6,500 people visited the museum and the sculpture garden, which reopened in December, during its three-day reopening weekend.

“I think people were thrilled, particularly kids who have been here before and have seen destruction around town,” she said. “When you come to this building there’s no destruction. But I think it makes a difference to all the people who pass through here. It’s kind of like going to church, you know, everybody isn’t going to have the same experience. It’s whatever you want it to be.

“To me, simply looking is the best part,” she says. “I think it’s great to know who the artist is, I think it’s great to know the technique, and I think it’s great to know the value. But I think looking is the best part, it’s the most fun…just looking!”

Repairs to the seeping museum basement cost $2.5 million, and the roof needed $500,000 worth of work. But the biggest loss, Sullivan said, was the NOMA staff, which dramatically dropped.

“We laid off 70 staff members, and we have since rehired 20,” she said. “Originally, we kept 15, but only 13 were able to come back.”

She said she’s heard from a few of the old staff, including a few from the 39 who stayed behind. But like many of the city’s evacuees, they’ve landed in places like Houston, Little Rock, Birmingham and Atlanta — cities within an eight hour drive, but outposts that may as well be Buffalo, Des Moines or Boise to a New Orleanian.

“We probably need (to hire) 10 more people right now, but we’ll fill in with senior staff and volunteers, and we’ll just play it by ear.”

Sullivan’s basement office — the drywall still showing the three-inch scar from the floodwater — looks like it’s been living in the eye of its own little hurricane. Stacks of folders and papers line her desk and floor, paintings that still haven’t found their place on her wall line the floor and her phone rings loudly and incessantly.

“Look at this,” she says, laughing at a three-inch thick notebook of hand-written names and phone numbers. “Some nights I would stay on the phone all night long.

“It’s not been the easiest time in my life,” she says. “The only thing I’m thankful for is that I shift gears well. I don’t have a lot of attributes, but that’s one of them.”

Sullivan is sure that her hometown, just like her museum, will make a comeback.

“You know, the city will make it, but that night when I first came back… I never want to experience that again.”

William Inman is editor of Dry Ink. Write to him at william@dryinkmag.com