Prospect New Orleans Announces Dates and Curatorial Advisory Group

NEW ORLEANS (press release) – Prospect New Orleans is thrilled to announce the dates and curatorial framework of Prospect.6, taking place Nov. 2, 2024 – Feb. 2, 2025 at venues across New Orleans. The triennial’s sixth edition, led by the Susan Brennan Co-Artistic Directors Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson, will emphasize New Orleans as a point of departure for examining our collective future as it relates to climate change, legacies of colonialism, and definitions of belonging.

This commitment to building an international conversation centered around issues germane to Louisiana has directly informed the expertise sought in the Co-Artistic Directors’ Curatorial Advisory Committee. In crafting the curatorial framework for the exhibition, Lash and Patterson have assembled an advisory team consisting of Ron Bechet, painter and art maker who is also the Victor H. Labat Professor of Art in the Department of Art at Xavier University of Louisiana; Zoe Butt, curator and writer based between Chiang Mai, Thailand and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and founder of the in-tangible institute in Thailand; Raphael Fonseca, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum, based in Lisbon, Portugal and Denver, CO; Tumelo Mosaka, independent curator and Mellon Project Director and Curator for African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University; Krista Thompson, Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art History at Northwestern University, where she teaches modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the African Diaspora and the Caribbean; and Dyani White Hawk, multimedia artist and independent curator based in Minneapolis, MN, whose practice challenges the lack of representation of Native arts, people, and voices in our national consciousness.

Their expertise informs the budding themes of the exhibition, which frames New Orleans as a harbinger for the world we will all soon live in, if not already. The Co-Artistic Directors are inspired by New Orleans’ unique ability to offer poignant lessons and models for how to live in constant negotiation with climate change, grounded within a community that reflects the global majority, in direct proximity to the effects and aftereffects of colonial and exploitative economies. What does it mean to think of a harbinger as a gift?

This collective approach also reiterates Prospect’s longstanding commitment to New Orleans’ creative communities, taking care to honor the complexity of lived experiences within New Orleans and other regions often framed by tourism, stereotypes, and service economies. Recognizing the often fraught relationship between triennials and their locales, Prospect.6 will aim to articulate an answer to enduring questions, such as “What does it mean to speak from a place, rather than at it?”

In bringing together artists for the edition, the Prospect.6 team intends to focus largely on new contributions by living artists. Particular attention will be given to those based in or with ties to Louisiana; as well as regions connected to Louisiana through historic paths of forced or voluntary migration and diaspora, including the Caribbean, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa; and the legacies of Native American peoples within North America. Having already held initial meetings with a number of artists both based in Louisiana and throughout the United States and the Caribbean, Lash and Patterson are continuing studio visits with artists in varying parts of the globe.

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