Newseum Collecting Artifacts For Hurricane Katrina Exhibit

By: Joe Strupp The Newseum is collecting artifacts for a special exhibit on Hurricane Katrina slated for 2010, the five-year anniversary of the devastating storm that ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi.

Susan Bennett, Newseum vice president for exhibits and programs, said the effort is in a "fact-finding stage at the moment." "We have been talking to the people in New Orleans and down in Biloxi [Miss]," she said of the Times-Picayune and the Sun Herald, which shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2005 hurricane. "We are in the initial stages."

Stan Tiner, editor of the Sun Herald, said Newseum staffers recently visited his paper. "They collected notebooks, photos, papers and were scouting out what they wanted," he explained. He said one item that might be included is a map the paper put on its newsroom wall to mark locations of the dead, which is still up: "You could look at the map and see the devastation that was occurring. We just haven't taken it down."

Bennett said the collection effort will continue into 2010 and urged anyone seeking to donate items to contact Newseum Curator of Collections Carrie Christoffersen at cchristoffersen@newseum.org.