Kevin Cole's Hurricane Katrina Works at The Phillips Collection

Kevin Cole's 2006 work Embracing Wisdom draws its shape from satellite imagery of Hurricane Katrina's trajectory, and it appears in an exhibition at The Phillips Collection. The storm made its second landfall on August 29, 2005 as a Category 4 hurricane, cutting through southeast Louisiana and Mississippi. New Orleans, lying below sea level, was spared the strongest winds, but the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borge were breached by rainwater and storm surge. Twenty percent of the city was flooded by that afternoon, and by August 31 the figure reached 80 percent. Tens of thousands of residents were stranded without resources in the aftermath, and more than a thousand people died. The failure of federal, state, and local responses was highly visible, giving the disaster national and international resonance. The presentation at The Phillips Collection places Cole's Katrina-inspired work within this history.