[Sponsored] Interview: Prospect New Orleans Takes a Long View in Prospect.6: “The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home”

On occasion of the upcoming sixth edition of Prospect, the triennial art exhibition held across the city, Glasstire talked with Prospect New Orleans’s Executive Director, Nick Stillman, and its Susan Brennan Co-Artistic Directors, Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson, about the exhibition’s history, what to expect from the forthcoming show, and how the event incorporates local communities. 

Glasstire (GT): To start off, can you tell us a bit about Prospect’s history? It has been around since 2008 (it was conceptualized in 2006, right?), and its history is deeply intertwined with the spirit and culture of the city. 

Nick Stillman (NS): Prospect formalized as an organization in 2007 and Prospect.1 opened in 2008. It’s important to remember that Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005; in 2007, New Orleans was still reeling economically and still under duress. Dan Cameron, the founder, had just curated the 2006 Taipei Biennial and had been coming to New Orleans for years. He had developed a close and influential network in New Orleans and, incredibly, launched what was then a biennial in the city. We’ve since become a triennial, and Prospect is now the longest-running North American ’ennial of its kind (i.e. spread across the city in many venues). 

I also think it’s fair to say that what New Orleans needed from Prospect in 2008 is not what it needs from Prospect now. That moment called for magic, because magic demands to be seen, and New Orleans needed witnesses. It needed support, and it needed to offer proof of the manmade devastation. Now, as we’ve evolved, we need to prove to residents that we’re for real. That we’re serious about our commitment to artists and the city and invested deeply in the local while also remaining invested in producing an ambitious triennial of artists from around the world. 

GT: What should we expect for the forthcoming sixth iteration of the triennial? Can you talk some about the themes, the curatorial premise, and how the show will fit into what’s going on in art nationally and internationally? 

NS: I’ll let Ebony and Miranda discuss the curatorial premise, but would love to address how this Prospect aligns with broader art subcultures in the current moment. For obvious reasons, I see a lot of bi and triennials. I have to! This is fun and brings me to interesting places, but it’s also homework. Much like we’ve seen from recent megashows (especially the most recent Documenta), Prospect.6 (P.6) will be an exhibition that forces artists to reckon with the local context (environment, politics) in the making of the work. When a show exists almost completely of newly commissioned work, you can’t generalize until it’s actual, but I’m seeing the theme of precarity waft through much of this work: the physical body, the economic reality, the loss of land. This will take many forms, of course, but when we look back at Prospect.6, I think we’ll remember the precarity of the moment and how the work poetically addressed it. 

Miranda Lash (ML): First and foremost, you can expect to see a great deal of ambitious work made specifically for this occasion! We wanted to showcase the forefront of artists’ practices and leaned heavily into the creation of new work. There are 42 new commissions in this iteration. Much of what will manifest in P.6 is the production of years of conversations with artists as they experimented and worked through the creation of responsive and nuanced work and presentations. 

The title, Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, the Harbinger Is Home, speaks to the ways different regions of the world, including New Orleans, are living “in the future,” in that they have been experiencing the effects of climate change and deep historical reckonings in profound ways for quite some time. New Orleans offers a signal to us of what is to come, and how life can be lived fully within this context. You often hear the phrase in the U.S. that “there’s no place like New Orleans.” While it is true that no place matches New Orleans’ layered musical, culinary, and cultural histories, it was important to us that that we reposition the narrative around New Orleans not as an “outlier city,” but rather as a reflection of the global majority: the eighty or more percent of world’s population that identifies as being of Indigenous, African, Asian, Latin American, and multi-racial descent. 

Some of the recurring themes that manifest in this iteration are the tensions between our very human connections to home, family, and community, and the winds of change and precarity due to political, economic, or ecological forces that compel us to migrate or redefine our relationship to home. Some artists articulate the desire for a repaired relationship with nature or with specific communities, whereas others see Prospect as an opportunity to illuminate stories that were historically suppressed or otherwise unable to surface until this current moment. Many artists address difficult subject matter, yet a great deal of hope also comes through in many of their projects. These expressions of hard-fought joy in many ways mirror the spirit of the city itself. Will the public accept or desire this tone? We’re opening on the eve of a heated presidential election, so we’ll certainly find out. 

Ebony G. Patterson (EGP): Prospect often boasts that it is an international triennial. We thought it was incredibly important to live up to this mandate, but to do it in a way that reflects the histories of the city. We were also concerned with the questions about what it means to work from a place vs. at a place. What it means to also acknowledge practicing artists whose countries had historic roots in Louisiana, but also artists whose practices had resonance with the evolving dialogue that Miranda and I were unpacking from so many of our conversations. We thought it important to broker and challenge the notion of exceptionalism, which can be detrimental, while also asking artists to wrestle with what it may mean to think about all of these places as being already in the future. What would it mean for us to convene in a place and have a conversation that is already ahead… in the future.

GT: Which projects are you all most excited about?

NS: I’m not taking the bait! I love all of our projects. 

ML: I agree with Nick — we feel attached and indebted to all our artists. The public artworks at places like Harmony Circle and the New Orleans African American Museum are important touchstones for us, but there are also many carefully crafted moments of contemplation in the galleries. Painting, sculpture, and video loom large in this iteration.

The scholar in me also has to plug the robust catalog we’re creating with Phaidon, which has sixty-two authors: an incredible assembly of artists, poets, and art historians from New Orleans and throughout the world. It will include installation images from P.6, and hence will arrive in spring 2025. 

EGP: I am in a unique position as a practicing artist working to help and support the vision of this cohort. It’s an incredible responsibility. But also an incredible gift and privilege to learn from colleagues. So many do not understand what it means to be an artist; what it takes to make and what it means to commit to practice. The audience comes and sees the culmination of years of thinking. A moment in a much larger endeavor. To witness each artist find their foothold, their stride, has been the best part of the journey. We asked each artist at the beginning of this journey to think about what it would mean to make their most ambitious work. And everyone has challenged us right back! 

GT: The exhibition always finds unique ways to engage the sprawl of the city and your various partner venues — how is this happening in the 2024-2025 exhibition? 

NS: We’re literally spread between the furthest stretches of the city this time. There are moments where people express frustration to me about how diffuse Prospect can be, and those people will have even more to say to me now! But I push back against that: Prospect is not meant to be a convenient experience that can be checked off in 48 hours. We invested our lives into this show for three years. I think it’s fair to ask visitors to invest themselves in something experiential, vast, and new. That’s what it will feel like to visit some of the further-out venues like the Ford Motor Plant on the border of the Lower Ninth Ward and Arabi, or the former LP&L Building in Algiers. 

ML: One of the most exciting mandates of Prospect is to “show New Orleans to New Orleanians.” This means we faced the challenge of finding spaces that have never been used in previous iterations, that New Orleanians might not encounter on their own. In choosing our sites we wanted to combine familiar favorites with special lesser-known spots. We arranged “hubs” of venues around the Central Business District, Treme, and Saint Claude Avenue, but as Nick mentioned, we are also including more far flung spaces like the Ford Motor Plant (where we’re showing twelve artists) and the shore of the Mississippi River along the Batture by Audubon Park. Our mission of serving the city by necessity requires some sprawl if we want to make art free and accessible for different neighborhoods. That said, New Orleans is a relatively compact city. We have 22 venues, but none are more than 20 minutes by car from the French Quarter.

For every artist in P.6, we embarked on a matchmaking process of aligning the artists’ concepts with the mission, function, or history of the venues. Some artists were drawn to the educational mandate of schools and universities, which is why we’re thrilled to partner with Xavier, UNO, and Tulane. Other artists engage with specific and at times charged histories, which has translated into some large-scale public art projects that respond to a site. By the way, it’s a rare privilege as a curator to allow an artist’s practice to dictate how a site is chosen and not the other way around! 

EGP: But none of this was easy. Each edition of Prospect begins the negotiations again. Even with longtime institutional collaborators. But this is one of the wonders for each Prospect, while Miranda reminds us that Prospect’s mandate is to show New Orleans to Orleanians. It’s also wondrous for us, before the artists, venues, and themes are revealed to the public. We as a team get the chance to do this; to meet old friends, discuss new ideas, to make new friends and show them what’s possible when we work and imagine together. And this is what’s at the heart of working in New Orleans. Nothing is possible without collaboration, and nothing is possible if people do not feel like they own this too!

GT: Can you all talk a bit about Prospect’s history with and connection to Texas? Nick, you currently live in Austin, and it seems that the triennial’s past presentations have normally included either Texas-based or Texas-adjacent artists.

NS: Prospect absolutely is an international exhibition, and yet we also strive to amplify artists living and working in communities proximate to us. The great Mel Chin, a Houstonian, is a Prospect.6 artist, and we’ve had projects by several fantastic Texas artists in former Prospect exhibitions: Margarita Cabrera, Adriana Corral, Jamal Cyrus, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Otabenga Jones and Associates, Stephen Rhodes, Dario Robleto, and Kay Rosen.

GT: I know initiatives like Prospect aren’t easy to put on, and are also a group effort. On that note, you all have a gala (the sole fundraising event Prospect hosts every three years) coming up on November 1. How is that event shaping up, and what should people know about it? 

NS: I reiterate: this is the lone fundraising event we host every three years! So please attend generously, because the revenue it produces is important. It’s also one hell of a party. It’s one of those art world moments when people come together and feel truly celebratory and let their hair down a little.

GT: The gala has a bevy of honorees too; have they been involved in Prospect in the past? 

NS: All are very important to the organization’s history and present. Ron Bechet was a Prospect.5 artist and his professorship and work at Xavier University has led to many partnerships over the years. Arthur Roger worked with Dan Cameron on the founding of Prospect, has represented several artists who have been in the show, and has been steadfastly supportive throughout the organization’s many chapters. Dr. Krista Thompson is a great scholar whose thinking and work has been especially influential to Ebony & Miranda. Dr. Joy Simmons is a significant collector of several former and current Prospect artists and has attended every Prospect; she sees around corners like we aspire to. And Nari Ward has been a Prospect artist twice, is a former board member, and is currently producing a limited edition work to benefit us. 

GT: What haven’t we asked that our readers should know about? Either about the exhibition itself, about Prospect as an organization, or about anything you all have coming up? 

NS: I’ll use my space to argue for the value of the ’ennial model. When we work with an artist, they almost invariably produce a work they never would have otherwise, both because of the long-form nature of the engagement and because of the influence of the city itself and the relationships developed between the start and the finish. And what better place to do this work than New Orleans, a city that forces people to think creatively, politically, and poetically?

ML: We have a powerhouse lineup of events in store for the opening and closing weekends, including newly commissioned artist performances, live music, art activations, and festivities. Opening weekend coincides with Halloween (October 30 – November 3) and Closing Weekend (January 31- February 2) overlaps with Tết, the Vietnamese New Year and fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Little Saigon in New Orleans. There will be great programming throughout the run, therefore plenty of occasions to join us!

EGP: Prospect.6 belongs to New Orleans first before it belongs to anyone else. Come out! Take up space! It’s yours!

 

Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home will be on view at various venues across New Orleans, Louisiana from November 4, 2024 to February 2, 2025. To learn more about this forthcoming iteration of the triennial, go here.