PROSPECT.1 NEW ORLEANS

Prospect.1 Curator, Dan Cameron

PROSPECT.1 NEW ORLEANS: 81 Artists 39 Countries 23 Locations 11 Weeks 1 City

A Tale of Two Cities could best define the landscape in New Orleans. On arrival last Thursday for the preview of Prospect.1, we checked into one of the oldest hotels in the French Quarter, a rather fine example of proper Creole Greek Revival architecture, situated less than a block from Bourbon Street, where people still get all mashed up on Jack Daniels and beer until the wee hours. Southern blues rock and cover music blaring from the bars but not a trace of Katrina. It’s a different story altogether in the Lower Ninth Ward. The area has been nearly abandoned—ravaged by Katrina. Amongst some of the best site-specific contributions in a district where more compelling works of art stand is Mark Bradford’s Ark, a monumental sculpture that takes as its core the shell of a destroyed house, built out with discarded scraps of wood and ephemera.

To really get a feel for New Orleans and Prospect.1, head down to Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, where you can rent bikes at Michael’s. There’s an easy-to-read Prospect.1 map and with an early start you can take in just about all of the biennial with the added bonus of being knocked out by the architecture – shotgun cottages, double-gallery colonials, Creole mansions —even in the Lower Ninth a few gems still remain standing.

Prospect.1 New Orleans is the largest biennial of contemporary art ever organized in the United States and is produced by U.S. Biennial, Inc. under the direction of international curator, Dan Cameron, Director of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans. www.prospectneworleans.org