Artwork

Bruce Davenport, Jr. preserves New Orleans Pre-Katrina with his artwork

October 1, 2025 2 Mins Read

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — It has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina impacted New Orleans and changed the world’s view on natural disasters and recovery. The artist Dapper Bruce Lafitte remembers New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina in his art.

The New Orleans Museum of Art commemorated Hurricane Katrina this summer with an exhibition of Lafitte’s artwork titled “A Time Before Hurricane Katrina.”

Large-scale pieces show high school bands, public housing projects and other cultural fixtures that once were.

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“I used a ruler, a pen and some markers on a paper. When I did the work, I felt like I was connected to a higher power. Hurricane Katrina gave me more appreciation towards life. We shouldn’t play with our lives. It can be here one minute and gone the next minute. Even if someone is having a bad day, they can look at the artwork and have a good day. That’s what I do with the artwork. I want to talk about things that were good in New Orleans. I try to right the wrongs so the next generation can correct it. Maybe they want to live like a village again, before Katrina changed our communities.”

Lafitte has been drawing all his life and is inspired by the Black culture of his beloved New Orleans. His first piece after Hurricane Katrina featured his high school band, Joseph S. Clark High School, where the likes of Rebirth Brass Band were born. He wants everyone to look at the colors and see the world of love he once knew.

Art has so much power within it. It can be beautiful, but it can also preserve things that were. While many of the people, buildings and feelings of New Orleans before August 2005 are gone, the artwork serves as a conduit. Lafitte’s artwork is a portal back to the neighborhood villages people once knew before Hurricane Katrina.

To learn more, visit the New Orleans Museum of Art website.

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