PROSPECT.1.5 NEW ORLEANS
Inter-Biennial Program to Take Place
November 6, 2010 – February 19, 2011
Presenting Over Fifty Artists in Venues Throughout the City
Showcasing New Orleans’
Contemporary Art Scene
New Orleans, LA, September 8, 2010—As part of its mission to present and promote the art and artists of New Orleans, U.S. Biennial will present Prospect.1.5 New Orleans, a fifteen-week program of exhibitions, symposiums, and public events taking place November, 6, 2010 through February 19, 2011. Prospect.1.5 will highlight the contemporary art scene in the city, with over fifty artists presenting work in thirteen venues throughout the New Orleans metropolitan area.
Prospect.1.5 will also serve as a preview to Prospect.2 New Orleans, the next edition of the international biennial, which will take place October 22, 2011 through January 29, 2012. Several Prospect.1.5 venues will also host exhibitions for Prospect.2, and many of the world’s most promising and/or recognized local, national and international artists will be visiting New Orleans during Prospect.1.5 in advance of developing major new projects to be premiered at Prospect.2.
Along with artists born and still working in New Orleans, approximately one-third of Prospect.1.5’s participants are native New Orleanians who have since moved away, several of whom will be exhibiting in their hometown for the first time through Prospect.1.5. In addition, the exhibition program will showcase the latest generation of young artists who have adopted New Orleans as their home, many moving to the city since Hurricane Katrina five years ago. With the world’s focus once again on the Gulf region following this summer’s devastating oil spill, Prospect.1.5 calls attention to the significance – and vibrancy – of New Orleans’ arts community.
The Prospect.1.5 programming will kick off on November 6 with a night of openings in the Julia Street gallery district culminating with Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective, organized by New Orleans Airlift. Members of the New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant will perform a selection of “tableau vivants,” bringing historic events, popular mythologies, and famous works of art to life atop a flatbed truck as it travels down the street. The following day, November 7
, visiting artist Jess Nissen will mount a performance that will encourage community involvement in a sound-based work of art at Wesley United Methodist Church, a future Prospect.2 venue. The project is the first in a series organized by the Central City Artist Project to coincide with Prospect.1.5.
Accompanying the openings of the St. Claude Arts District on November 13, a two-night Open Studios event will take place the following weekend, November 13 and 14. Organized by the Entergy Innovation Center and Open Studio Artist Collective in collaboration with Prospect New Orleans, artists in the Marigny, Bywater, and St. Claude neighborhoods will open up their working spaces for public visits.
Exhibition highlights include Fresh Off the Turnip Truck at the Louisiana State Museum’s Madame John’s Legacy, an 18th-century building in the French Quarter, showcasing the work of eight young artists who have recently moved to New Orleans. The exhibition will juxtapose some of the city’s newest talents with a historic setting: one of a handful of Creole buildings remaining in New Orleans. The site will also serve as a venue for Prospect.2 next year.
The Angola Project, organized in collaboration with the Mahalia Jackson Center’s Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation in Central City, takes its name from Angola State Penitentiary. Artworks by Angola prisoners will be exhibited alongside those of Prospect New Orleans artists, exploring themes of hope, reconciliation, and dignity as well as stigma and violence. A symposium featuring the artists and representatives of the legal groups The Innocence Project and Resurrection after Exoneration will accompany the exhibition, along with talks and workshops in neighborhood schools.
Other Prospect.1.5 collaborations with local educational centers include Everyday Hybrid, an exhibition at Isaac Delgado Fine Art Gallery of Delgado Community College, and A Second of Your Time at Ken Kirschman Artspace of NOCCA Institute|Riverfront. In conjunction with local universities, Prospect.1.5 will launch a pilot program, the Critical Writing Initiative (CWI), introducing critical writing into the curriculum of arts programs at Loyola University, University of New Orleans, Dillard University, and Xavier Universities. The CWI will be expanded during Prospect.2 to additional colleges and universities, as well as area high schools.
Prospect.1.5 also showcases the city’s growing and vital gallery scene. Several major New Orleans galleries will open their doors to present Prospect.1.5 exhibitions, including: Arthur Roger Gallery, Good Children Gallery, Heriard Cimino Gallery, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Lemieux Gallery, M. Francis Gallery, and Octavia Art Gallery.
Note: A full list of Prospect.1.5 New Orleans exhibitions is available here.
About Prospect New Orleans
Founded in 2008 by Dan Cameron, Prospect New Orleans is the largest biennials of international contemporary art in the United States. Conceived in the tradition of the great international biennials, such as the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo, Prospect New Orleansshowcases new artistic practices from around the world in a setting that is both historic and culturally unique, and contributes to the revitalization of New Orleans by spurring tourism and bringing international attention to the city’s vibrant visual arts community.
Prospect New Orleans is founded on the principle that art engenders social progress. It is organized by U.S. Biennial, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit art organization that launched in January 2007 in order to realize Prospect.1.
Funding Organizations and Donors
Prospect New Orleans has been made possible by the support of Founding Benefactor Toby Devan Lewis
. Additional funding has been generously provided by the Board of Directors of U.S. Biennial as well as from foundations, corporations, domestic and foreign government agencies, and hundreds of individual donors. Past and present funders include: The Annenberg Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Brown Foundation, The Prudential Foundation, The RosaMary Foundation, Bloomberg, Whitney National Bank, Etant Donne, the Heymann Fund, Iberiabank, Agnes Gund, Virginia Lyons Speed, and The Prospectors Club, among others. Local support has been provided by the State of Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, as well as the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Downtown Development District.
All contributions to U.S. Biennial are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. To
make a donation please visit www.prospectneworleans.org or call +1 (212) 680-5305.
Media Contact
For more information, images or interview, please contact:
Elizabeth Reina or Deirdre Maher, Blue Medium
T. +1 (212) 675-1800
E. elizabeth@bluemedium.com or deirdre@bluemedium.com
* Image Credit: Brice Bischoff, Bronson Cave, 2009, C-print |
