Gabrielle Garcia Steib (SLA ’26) was born and raised in New Orleans, with family from Nicaragua and Mexico. A candidate for photography in Tulane’s MFA program, her work explores memory as a place — specifically ways in which collective memory and images are used to communicate in political landscapes.

Steib is currently one of 13 artists featured in the 40th anniversary edition of the Museum of Modern Art’s annual group exhibition of current photo-based work, “New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging.” Described on the MoMA website, “these creative practitioners offer slowness, persistence, and care as an antidote to the viral, profit-driven speed of contemporary image consumption, metadata technologies, and artificial intelligence.”

Steib’s work focuses on documenting narratives that construct parallels between Latin America and New Orleans, using historical context and research and contrasting it with contemporary experiences — such as the 20th-century banana trade that created physical connections with the two places or post-Katrina migrants who rebuilt the city, documenting their children and the life they created in New Orleans.

“I try to engage with memory and images as modes of communication — memory as a fertile gesture [image as concrete evidence of a lived experience],” shares Steib. “I hope to continue exploring the tenderness and temporality of the human experience, and how grief and memory occupy space in this life.”

“Lines of Belonging” is on view through January 17, 2026.

Last spring, Classical Studies Professor Susann Lusnia received an email from Daniella Santoro, an adjunct professor in Tulane’s School of Professional Advancement and homeowner in the West Carrollton neighborhood near campus. Santoro needed Lusnia’s help in identifying a mysterious marble stone — inscribed in Latin — that she’d uncovered while gardening in her backyard.

Lusnia teaches Roman Art and Archeology courses in the School of Liberal Arts, and is currently writing a textbook on topography and monuments of Ancient Rome. Using key words and phrases from the Latin text, she was able to quickly identify the writing as a funerary inscription for a sailor in the Roman imperial fleet during the second century A.D.

“Susann is probably one of a few people on this planet who knew what this was and how to identify it, and she was a few blocks away from me in her office at Tulane,” says Santoro, who also earned her PhD in Medical Anthropology in the School of Liberal Arts. She had tried doing internet research and using AI to translate at first, before contacting Anthropology Professor John Verano, who put her in touch with Lusnia.

“This is a reminder that the specialized knowledge and experience that Dr. Lusnia has can never be replicated,” Santoro continues. “You never know when you might need a Roman archaeologist!”

Lusnia’s research went on to place the tombstone as one of several found in an ancient Roman cemetery in Civitavecchia, Italy, in the 1860s. In 1918, it was moved to the Archeologico Nazionale di Civitavecchia Museum before going missing following extensive bombing during WWII. Lusnia soon got in contact with the museum; over the summer, she was able to meet with the director and staff in Civitavecchia and view similar inscriptions from the site.

Since then, the incredible discovery has sparked interest across the globe and set off a mission to repatriate the item. Santoro also enlisted the help of UNO Archeology Professor D. Ryan Gray, who wrote an article for the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. WWL-TV later covered the story, eventually leading to the answer of how the tablet made it to a backyard in New Orleans.

The tablet was turned over to the FBI Art Crimes unit in May — the first step in its lengthy repatriation process. “We’re looking forward to hearing when our lost Roman sailor finally arrives back home, and we can all celebrate his return,” says Lusnia.

Provided by Tulane University classical archeologist Susann Lusnia in October 2025, the photo shows the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus, discovered in a New Orleans backyard. (Susann Lusnia).

Tulane University classical archaeologist Susann Lusnia explains her investigation into the backstory of the 1,900-year-old gravestone for a Roman sailor which had been missing for decades from an Italian museum, on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)