Betting on the Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS—It was the day after he sat on a panel discussion at New Orleans's Arthur Roger Gallery that curator Dan Cameron had what he describes as his "duh" moment. The talk was held on January 27, 2006, roughly five months after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and speakers focused on how the New Orleans cultural community could regain its pre-storm status and also contribute to the overall recovery of the city. "It was great to go down and talk to people so soon after the storm, but I wanted to do something more," said Cameron, then of New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art. "The day after the panel, I thought, 'What can I do? I'm just a curator who organizes international biennials'—and then there it was."

The result of Cameron's epiphany is Prospect.1 New Orleans, a biennial international exhibition on the model of the Venice Biennale slated to debut October 2008. With commitments from venues throughout the city and a roster of artists from around the world, the exhibition aims to reinvigorate the city by promoting tourism and drawing international attention to its cultural life. But the show’s ultimate goal reaches well beyond hurricane recovery to asserting a place for New Orleans on an international contemporary art map, much in the way that Art Basel's Miami incarnation raised that city's global profile.

Shoring up Support
Cameron, a curator at the New Museum from 1995 until earlier this year, has organized several international exhibitions throughout his career, including the eighth international Istanbul Biennial in 2003 and the 2006 Taipei Biennial. Up until now, he had never lived in New Orleans, but he has been a regular visitor for the last two decades, developing a love for the music, cuisine, and culture of the city. Following his own interests, he plans to keep the theme of the initial biennial simple, focusing on the city's history, physical beauty, and unique possibilities as a venue for contemporary art rather than a specific intellectual framework.

"[New Orleans] has the most extraordinary spaces for showing art," said Cameron. "When I take artists around to visit the warehouses and the historic spaces that—for better or worse—have been untouched by real-estate development for 50 or 60 years, they are just beside themselves."

The biennial is poised to be the largest ever organized in the United States, featuring work by some 75 artists installed at most of the city's major cultural institutions, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the New Orleans African American Museum, as well as smaller locations throughout New Orleans. There are also plans for roughly a dozen site-specific works peppered throughout the city's neighborhoods and a concurrent schedule of programming, including lectures and performances. "It's going to be one large exhibition that snakes through town," Cameron said.

When he approached the Contemporary Arts Center's executive director Jay Weigel about participating in Prospect.1, Cameron found more than just a venue. Following the hurricane, the CAC's visual art curator had quit and the registrar had been laid off, which left the institution barely able to maintain a base level of programming. Rather than have Cameron swoop in for a short period and install a portion of the biennial there, Weigel asked him to take over as visual arts director.

"I didn't think twice," said Cameron of his decision to leave the New Museum to helm the visual-art side of the struggling institution. "It's just part and parcel of being part of New Orleans' recovery: You can't wear just one hat."

Others have been eager to pitch in as well. Since founding the nonprofit behind Prospect.1 earlier this year, Cameron has seen steady progress toward the fundraising goal of $3.5 million. But with most local organizations involved in the recovery effort tapped out, the biennial has relied on donors in other cities for funding. An initial contribution of $600,000 came from Cleveland and Florida–based insurance billionaire Peter B. Lewis, a former president of the board of the Guggenheim Museum, and major donors from all over the world who have been looking for an opportunity to help rebuild New Orleans's art institutions have followed suit.