Join us for the opening reception for Fallen Fruit’s EMPIRE, a new art installation on view at the Newcomb Art Museum. Friday, April 13. 5:30pm – 9pm

Celebrating the New Orleans Tricentennial, EMPIRE is an art installation by Los Angeles-based artists Fallen Fruit, David Allen Burns and Austin Young, commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. Through this assembly of over 300 objects, the artists will transform the entire museum into one immersive artwork.

The project uses objects culled from the diverse archives and collections across campus, including art, sound, documents of record, material culture, and artifacts. It activates objects held by the Amistad Research Center, Hogan Jazz Archive, Latin American Library, Louisiana Research Collection, Middle American Research Institute, Newcomb Art Museum, Newcomb College Institute, Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection / Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute, and Southeastern Architectural Archive, among other campus collections, shifting the lexicon of historical meanings into one work of art.

EMPIRE critically examines the principles of archives and anthropology to interrogate the ways histories are told, remembered, and revised. The immersive artwork considers the historical and contemporary effects that colonialism, slavery, trade, and tourism have had on the movement of culture across and beyond borders to better understand the geographic and cultural position of New Orleans in relationship to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. EMPIRE invites viewers to creatively interpret the displayed objects, their connections, and their juxtapositions to generate new meanings.

EMPIRE at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is part of “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” a suite of site-specific projects taking place throughout New Orleans from June 2017 through June 2018, commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” was initiated by Pelican Bomb in 2015.