Global Highways

Global Highways places the construction of the Interstate 10 elevated expressway along Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans within a transnational historical context. The homogenizing forces of global racial capitalism from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries sought to impose urban anonymity through identical roadways, interstates, and expressways onto neighborhoods with their own history, culture, and traditions. Highways give us the ability to pass through without noticing. To drive through without stopping to notice, though, robs us of knowledge of the past and dooms us to an unjust future. The residents of the four cities featured in the Global Highways exhibit – New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Paris – prove the perseverance of human memory and show that tradition and culture can be the tools of triumph.

Click through to Room One: Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans. You can navigate between rooms as your proceed through the exhibit.