USA Banksy's Umbrella Girl

Banksy is a UK-based graffiti artist who has painted stencils all over the world, employing a dark humor to explore political and social critiques and themes. In 2008, around the 3 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Banksy descended upon New Orleans and painted a number of pieces around the city that commented on the post-Katrina quagmire. This cache is located near one of his few remaining New Orleans pieces, which has been preserved behind a piece of plexiglass on the side of an abandoned building. This piece is a stencil of a girl holding an umbrella over her head, but rather than protecting her, instead black drips fall from the under-side of the umbrella onto the girl – a metaphor for the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina – which were intended to protect the city from flooding but instead caused it. This piece has undergone a handful of attempts to damage or destroy it – most infamously when a man attempted to cut away the entire wall of the building the painting is on before neighbors in the vicinity realized what was happening and the perpetrator fled. No surprise that someone might attempt such a brazen theft – according to the NOPD, quoted in a nola.com article about the attmepted theft, the painting is estimated to have a value of $200,000 to $1.1 million.

Park on the side of the street