Return to Old & New Orleans by Drue Kataoka

In New Orleans, “secondline” funeral processions mix grief and joy. The musicians in this painting (all portraits of musicians from Jazz at Lincoln Center) play to mourn the loss of their city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but also to celebrate its rebirth with grief and joy. The work is a tribute to the strength of artistic traditions even as Katrina’s torrents attempt to wash them away. Above all, this painting is a secondline procession for the arts—celebrating their everyday death and rebirth in the tumultuous contemporary world.