Port to move newly installed mural after non-white employees take issue

quote:

---

The Port of New Orleans finished installing a new mural in its executive offices last month. The painting, a 19-by-eight-foot depiction of a port workday in the 1850s, cost $51,588 to purchase and install.

The purchase was reported by Fox 8 last week in a segment that questioned whether the Port, a government agency overseen by a board appointed by the governor, should be spending so much cash for a painting on the building’s fourth floor outside the executive suite, where few members of the public would ever see it.

But the mural has sparked a different conversation among Port employees, according to three current and one former employee that spoke to The Lens. Rather than discussing the issue of fiscal responsibility, they said that employees have been focused on the depiction of people of color in the mural, some of whom are shown hauling bales of cotton.

---

quote:

---

“It’s been a really hard week at the Port,” said a current Port employee who asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns about her job. “There’s just been a lot of anxiety surrounding that painting.”

---