Artefacts of inequity in art education: Critically tracing what disaster reveals

At the start of the author’s second year as an art educator in New Orleans public schools in August 2005, the city was devastated by the cataclysmic destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Almost twenty years later, new disasters have come and gone, adding more layers to a culture that has always held both deep pain and ardent joy, a place that is persistently haunted by not only environmental precarity but also years of racial, economic and educational injustice, yet remaining one of the most culturally dynamic and artistically active places in the United States. Drawing upon Jane Bennett’s framework of vital materiality, and Amelia Kraehe’s framework of arts equity within a methodology of research-creation as delineated by Natalie Loveless, Erin Manning and Sarah Truman, the author utilizes personal artefacts as catalysts for critically tracing what disaster reveals about inequity in art education. This inquiry invites other art educators to engage in critical reflection on what their own identity artefacts reveal and conceal about equity and justice within art education.