Saving a New Orleans Banksy

When Banksy visited New Orleans a few years after Hurricane Katrina, the artist left 17 murals behind, sprinkled across the city. One piece on the exterior of a biker bar, Boy on a Life Preserver Swing, had been spray-painted over and then reduced to rubble after the bar was demolished. Ronnie Fredericks, a dump truck driver, went to the site to collect the cinderblocks that made up the mural and stored them for years until he found an opportunity—and an art-loving New Orleans hotelier—to bring the artwork back to life. Ivy Knight writes a delightful Oxford American story about three people who come together to restore a Banksy.

Grenier met Cummings and Fredericks at a warehouse in Bywater—the same one where she’d spent two months working on Looters. Located along the railroad tracks close to the Mississippi River, it takes up a whole city block. As she looked at the collection of cinderblocks, she had a few concerns. First was where to begin, for they were in no particular order, and she had only Fredericks’s word that a Banksy existed under the paint. And was Fredericks trustworthy? She noticed he had a tattoo of Da Vinci on his bicep. “I was a little suspicious when I saw that tattoo of Leonardo because I thought, ‘Well, maybe you’re an artist or maybe you’re a forger. I don’t know who you are yet.’” Counterfeit art is a common concern in Grenier’s work. “There will always be art forgers as long as there’s a demand for art. You’ve got to be really careful with Banksy. We know there have been some fakes,” she said. “It’s difficult to identify spray paint, because of it being a modern material and available to anybody. So, you know, initially I wasn’t that optimistic.”