Photo by Pat Jolly

Victor Harris, Big Chief of the Fi Yi Yi Indians, and the costumes he designed for Mardi Gras in 2008

Jacqueline Humphries Julie Mehretu Srdjan Loncar Cai Guo Qiang Juan Calzadilla Sotheby’s Sees Strong Sales in Hong Kong Contemporary Art Dallas Cowboys Show Their Artsy Side

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Why should anyone care about another new biennial? To be clear, Prospect.1 New Orleans, curated by Dan Cameron, differs from other megashows by virtue of its site: America’s most baffling, heartbreaking, elating, and unique city. Coming during a presidential administration teeming with betrayals of the American public (an unprecedented fiscal crisis, the normalization of preemptive war, the dismemberment of privacy in the name of “security”), the failure of New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina may well go down as Bush’s crowning indignity. A biennial taking place in New Orleans has no choice but to acknowledge the implicit politics of orchestrating something of this magnitude there, which is why the project appealed to Cameron, who curated the 2003 Istanbul Biennial. “I think the time is ripe for a totally different framework for leveraging the world’s interest in new art into something both useful and meaningful,” Cameron says. “I believe that society at large is now ready to admit that the government failed, and continues to fail, New Orleans, so the way we promote cultural tourism through Prospect.1 has a lot to do with appealing to prospective visitors’ sense of civic duty and pride.”

In a sense, it’s awkward for New Orleans to play host to anything with a whiff of “the institution” as it relates to visual art. Its art scene is informal and is centered on music and performance. There’s nothing quite like the hypnotizing ritualism of Mardi Gras Indians (eight Mardi Gras suits designed by Victor Harris, Big Chief of the Fi Yi Yi Indians, will be a Prospect.1 highlight) or a brass band bursting into a bar and blowing your ears out before casually dispatching for the next platform. Then again, social awkwardness has a way of dissipating in New Orleans, and while local artists are cautious (especially about out-of-towners parachuting into devastated neighborhoods), they’re planning a slew of fringe events that might very well steal the show, such as guerrilla public-art actions sponsored by Aorta Projects, and revelry and reverie at the city’s vital row of galleries on St. Claude Avenue. Prospect.1’s roster includes a healthy number of New Orleans artists—Willie Birch, Harris, Jacqueline Humphries, and Srdjan Loncar among them—as well as a nice list of non–New Orleanians, like Allora and Calzadilla, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Kalup Linzy, and Julie Mehretu. Its venues are scattered throughout the city, from a Baptist church to the Contemporary Arts Center to a furniture store–cum–multipurpose cultural destination. In 2006, after breezing through a Whitney Biennial loaded with statements of political impotence, a friend commented, “The whole show should have been about New Orleans.” Finally, it will be.

Prospect.1 New Orleans will be on view from November 1 through January 19, 2009. For more information, visit prospectneworleans.com.  "Prospect 1: New Orleans" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2008 Table of Contents.