Noteworthy
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CURIOSITIES
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Power to the Parks
SIX YEARS AFTER ALMOST CLOSING FOR LACK OF FUNDS, RESTRUCTURED LOUISIANA STATE PARKS ARE EDGING TOWARDS FINANCIAL SELF-SUFFICIENCY Fontainebleau State Park. Photo by Alexandra Kennon.
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uring the pandemic, Louisiana State Parks got busy. According to Brandon Burris, Assistant Secretary of Louisiana State Parks, Louisiana’s twenty-one parks saw visitation increase dramatically during 2020, as people went looking for safe ways to be active out of doors and close to home.
Now, with pandemic fears eased and more people getting out to do things, the state park habit seems to be sticking. “Over the Memorial Day weekend we had 22,000 people visit a Louisiana state park,” Burris said. More visitors equals more revenue, and Burris noted that during the fiscal year that ended June 30, the state’s parks
collected $11.9 million in overnight and day-use fees—an increase of more than forty percent and around a third of the system’s operating budget of $35 million. That’s a turnaround from the situation that Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser inherited when he took office in 2016, when according to Burris, the shortage of user-generated revenue made it likely that six or seven of Louisiana’s state parks would need to close. “Not only have we kept all twenty-one open, we’ve actually increased the number of hours they’re open,” Burris said. He explained that the agency accomplished this through a combination of increased fees, more efficient use of park personnel, and by expanding the number and variety of public-private partnerships, licensing more outside organizations to deliver services—like canoe or kayak rentals, horseback riding instruction, snoball stands, or even upmarket “glamping” experiences—on state park properties.
The strategy appears to be working. According to Burris, last year three Louisiana parks—Fontainebleau, Lake Fausse Pointe, and Palmetto Island— brought in more revenue than was spent to operate them. More are close behind. “On the July 4 weekend, the director at Bogue Chitto State Park (site of fourteen miles of mountain bike trails built in partnership with the Northshore Off-Road Bicycling Association) told me he counted license plates from eight states in his parking lot, and that it was impossible to find a hotel room nearby,” Burris said. He noted another interesting detail: PreCOVID the state’s parks saw about a 70/30 split between in-state and out-ofstate visitors, but that now that number is closer to 92/8. “I guess that was the silver lining of COVID,” Burris said. “People looking for safe things to do came, they enjoyed it. And now they want to come and do it again.” —James Fox-Smith lastateparks.com
A Fashionable Debut
THE LSU TEXTILE & COSTUME MUSEUM OPENS WITH AN EXHIBITION ON MAYAN ARTIFACTS
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ast year, an exciting feature of our 2020 “Deep South Design” issue was the much-anticipated completion of the LSU Textile & Costume Museum, whose grand opening had at that time been postponed from its original March 2020 opening to an unknown date due to the coronavirus pandemic. While visitors have been invited to peruse the museum’s impressive collections of more than twelve thousand artifacts—which range from a 1966 James Galanos cocktail dress to Byzantine-era textile fragments to Larry 8
Landry’s 1936 LSU boxing robe—up until now they’ve only been able to do so by appointment. Finally, after forty years of preparation and one year of patiently waiting, the LSU Textile & Costume Museum will get its much-deserved debut on Sunday, August 29. “The Friends are enthusiastically awaiting this very special event like small children on Christmas morning,” said Jeanne Triche, President of the Friends of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum. “We have worked hard and waited a very long time to see this come to fruition.” The Museum’s grand opening will
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coincide with the exhibition Trajé: Mayan Textile Artistry, which features the Travis Doering Collection of textiles and related artifacts from forty Mayan villages in the Guatemala Highlands. Exhibits will include examples of traditional Mayan dress, which represent centuries of weaving traditions and symbolism, passed from mothers to daughters still today. Adding context to these textiles is an exhibit of photographs by humanitarian photojournalist Connie Frissbee Houda, who will be present at the exhibition to share perspectives on the spirit and sacred nature of the Mayan people and
their traditions. Dr. Travis Doering, co-director of the digital heritage and humanities collections at the University of South Florida, will also present a lecture titled “Woven Voices: A Journey Into Maya Textiles and Cultural Heritage” on opening day. On opening day, the gallery will be open from 2 pm–5 pm. Admission is free and open to the public. For details on the exhibition and museum, contact Erica Woolard at (225) 578-2448 or by email at ericaw1@lsu.edu. —Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
