Ashe Cultural Arts Center

Artist and community organizer Carol Bebelle founded this center in 1996, naming it from the Yoruba concept ashé — the power to make things happen. The building became one of the first catalytic renovations on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, helping trigger the street's broader revitalization. It operates as gallery, performance space, community hall, and cultural embassy for Central City. Programming centers African diaspora art, second line traditions, and neighborhood-scale storytelling. The work happens at the scale where culture gets made and held — exhibitions rotate, performances fill the room, the building answers to the block. New Orleans was the largest city in the South at the start of the Civil War, the largest port in the Southern United States throughout the 19th century, a place built on export and river traffic and the labor that made both possible. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city lost much of its original population; the loss of much of the Black population affected the city's culture in ways that cannot be replicated by the influx of new ethnic and cultural groups post-Katrina. An institution founded to anchor Black cultural life carries different freight after that rupture. Check ashecac.org for current exhibitions and events. The building stands at 1712 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard — go when something's on, when the work is live and the room is answering its name.