THNOC’s New Exhibit “Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration”
Detail from one exhibit that is made up of 250 prisoner portraits taken by artist Deborah Luster over a four-year period.
September 2024A powerful new exhibit at The Historic New Orleans Collection eloquently weaves history, art, and video to challenge viewers: How can this malignant system change for the better?
– by Christopher Louis Romaguera
photographs by Ellis AndersonHistory museums, at their best, show us the facts of the past to help us better understand what is happening today. And that is exactly what The Historic New Orleans Collection (THNOC), has accomplished with their newest exhibit, Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration.
Captive State tackles the difficult and deeply-rooted 300+ year history that has led to Louisiana becoming the world’s incarceration capital, spotlighting the link between the institution of slavery and the rate of imprisonment.
The "Tree of Life" quilt at the beginning of the exhibit was made by hospice volunteers at Angola, who sell the quilts to raise money for the program. This piece represents the lives of people who died in Angola while incarcerated.
Using multimedia exhibits – ranging from artwork by the incarcerated, to video interviews, to factual artifacts and interactive exhibits – it reveals the connections between history and current realities that are mostly obscured in mainstream culture.
Eric Seiferth, THNOC historian/curator, and co-curator of Captive State, said, “We’ve [THNOC] purposefully been wanting to do more projects that are immediately relevant to our community in New Orleans. This is something that really impacts everybody in the city – and state.”
The exhibit has been installed on the third floor of the museum’s new (2019) Tricentennial Wing at 520 Royal Street. At the top of the stairs, Captive State is introduced by an enormous wall graph showing that while the United States is the incarceration capital of the world, Louisiana far and away imprisons more people per capita than any other state.
The Tricentennial Wing at The Historic New Orleans Collection
At the entrance to the exhibit
An introductory description for the exhibit states “As the human and financial costs continue to mount, even in the face of declining crime rates, Louisiana itself is held captive by this history.” Visitors will also read that “The institutions of slavery and mass incarceration are historically linked,” which is one of the guiding philosophies of the exhibit.
Captive State is split into two sections on the third floor. The first section examines Louisiana’s past laws and the treatment of both criminals and the enslaved, from the beginnings of the colony through convict leasing – a practice made possible by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Passed after the Civil War in 1865, it outlawed slavery in all cases, except as punishment for a crime. Unscrupulous profiteers took advantage of the law and actually leased convicts for forced labor.
The exhibit shows us artist renditions, old record books, and descriptions of the punishments that were exacted in public view, in the center of cities and towns. In one interactive component, visitors can heft the reproduction of an iron ball that had been chained to an enslaved person as punishment. Visitors will also be able to read the diary of an incarcerated person and see historic newspaper articles and statistics.
A mesmerizing video called “A Deliberate Retreat” uses a series of New Orleans maps with drone footage shows the migration of the city’s incarceration facilities. The colony’s first jail was in the Cabildo, with grisly executions and public punishments taking place in Jackson Square.
Museum-goers can read the diary of by an incarcerated man.
A 13.5 pound ball shackled to the leg of an enslaved woman named Peggy for three years as punishment for manslaughter. She was required to fulfill all duties "at the service of [her] master.
A facsimile of the iron ball that exhibit-goers can lift to experience its weight.
Watching the video short "A Growing Jail District."
A screenshot from the video "A Growing Jail District," which uses drone footage to show the historic changes.
As the population grew, the prisons were pushed out of the Quarter - first to one built in the location of Armstrong Park and later to a Gothic building constructed where the main library now stands on Loyola. Eventually, an entire prison complex grew up in the Tulane and Broad area. By 2005, a dozen buildings jailed nearly 7,500 people.
A group getting a guided tour through the exhibit.
A panel from the video "Deliberate Retreat"
The second part of the exhibit focuses on the Jim Crow era through the present day. It focuses on the laws used to justify the incarceration and hard labor of those deemed “criminals.” For instance, one grouping explains how “tough on crime laws” disproportionately punished Black people.
Visitors will also learn that until recent years, Louisiana was one of only two states to allow non-unanimous juries, a Jim Crow-era law that was “explicitly designed to rig the legal system against Black defendants.” Louisiana voters finally abolished it in 2018, while the Supreme Court made it illegal in any state in 2020.
Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison is spotlighted in both sections of the exhibit. One panel explains that “by the late 1800s, most state prisoners were Black and forced to work a plantation property that became known as Angola.” The 18,000 acre prison farm has “continually operated with forced labor for nearly 200 years.”
A telling screen-shot from a video short about Angola
A quote from Judge E. Gordon West, from the Middle District Court is displayed on one wall. In 1975, he said that “[Conditions at Angola] would shock the consciences of any right-thinking person.”
The Visiting Room Project toward the end of Captive State is a particularly powerful component that shows videos of incarcerated people being interviewed. This section “invites the public to sit face to face with people serving life without the possibility of parole to hear them tell their stories in their own words.”
Testimonial videos at the end of the exhibit include those by Promise of Justice Initiative and The Visiting Room Project
Infographics throughout offer quickly digested and eye-opening statistics.
Throughout, the exhibit is punctuated with art projects either produced by prisoners or involving them. One of the most striking is a wall made up of 250 prisoner portraits taken by artist Deborah Luster over a four-year period.
This exhibit is made up of 250 prisoner portraits taken by artist Deborah Luster over a four-year period.
This exhibit is made up of 250 prisoner portraits taken by artist Deborah Luster over a four-year period. Additional copies were printed on metal "cards" that are stacked in a file cabinet and can be handled by exhibit-goers
This exhibit is made up of 250 prisoner portraits taken by artist Deborah Luster over a four-year period. Additional copies were printed on metal "cards" that are stacked in a file cabinet and can be handled by exhibit-goers
Others include two quilts made by prison hospice volunteers, who make and sell quilts to help fund the program. One is called “The Joy of Freedom” and the other is called “The Tree of Life.” Photographs of the hospice center by Lori Waselchuk are shown on the mezzanine in a separate exhibit titled “Grace Before Dying,”
At the end of the exhibit, THNOC provides a contemplation area where people can sit and reflect alone or with members of their group. They can participate by leaving notes on a wall that asks “if you could change Louisiana’s incarceration system, where would you begin?” Call-to-action cards invite those who have been moved by the exhibit to advocate, donate, volunteer, learn or join.
At the exhibit's end, visitors are given a space to reflect, discuss and leave thoughts about changes that could be made.
At the exhibit's end, visitors are given a space to reflect, discuss and leave thoughts about changes that could be made.
At the exhibit's end, visitors are given a space to reflect, discuss and take action to make changes to Louisiana's incarceration system.
As Seiferth said, “The number one thing we want visitors to come away with is an understanding of the historic connections between mass incarceration in our state and slavery…understanding that it’s a story about people, it’s about us.”
A Personal Note:
New Orleans boasts many fine museums, but this exhibit was one of the most profound I’ve experienced in the city, in fact, in the country. I toured Captive State with several poets, all of whom were seeing it for the first time. Outside, the sky had been darkened by a passing cloudburst, and we all moved through the exhibit huddled and close, occasionally glimpsing the rain outside in the courtyard.
There’s something poignant about going down from the third floor to the first, closer to one of the locations where human beings were sold - just next door to the museum (at the site of the demolished St. Louis Exchange Hotel).
The French Quarter is a beautiful neighborhood with a complicated history – to say the least. Walking through it after viewing the exhibit, past where some of the precipitating history that led to Louisiana’s place as the world’s incarceration capital took place, I found myself with a greater appreciation of that history. Captive State had fully integrated the past and the present for me, giving me energy to reflect, to hope and help – and to work – for a better future.
"The Joy of Freedom," created by hospice volunteers, was commissioned to accompany the photography exhibit "Grace Before Dying," on view on the second-floor mezzanine. The quilt depicts a funeral on the grounds of Angola and includes the names of hospice patients who have passed away.
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