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| P.3's You Belong Here by Tavares Strachan |
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| Pink Rabbit |
It
was neither the best nor the worst of times, but for the visual arts in
New Orleans, it was a year that began with... a pink rabbit. The
creation of Trisha Kyner and David Friedheim,
Pink Rabbit is a
loopy steel sculpture of a loping rabbit in motion, one of several dozen
such works installed about town by Michael Manjarris'
Sculpture for New Orleans
project in concert with the Helis Foundation, Downtown Development
District and various public spirited individuals. Though not the
biggest, the
Pink Rabbit's appearance on the Poydras Avenue
median next to the Superdome at the start of 2014 was celebrated in
social and traditional media as a holiday hangover hallucination made
permanent, thereby unexpectedly publicizing the Poydras median's
transformation into a linear sculpture park of some 26 mostly blue chip
works. In that sense, it typified any number of little noticed
subcurrents that seemed to suddenly surface as full blown spectacles in
2014.
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| Andrea Andersson |
It
was a year of culminations, consolidations and new beginnings,
sometimes all happening at once. At the Contemporary Arts Center, it was
new director Neil Barclay's first full year on the job at an art
institution that had been without a curator since Amy Mackie quit in
2012. In October, he announced that a new curator, Andrea Andersson, had
been selected. A New Orleans native who had lived in New York since
2001, she is the granddaughter of legendary former New Orleans Opera
conductor, Knud Andersson, suggesting that her approach may be somewhat
multidisciplinary, in keeping with the CAC founders' original vision.
Other notable 2014 arrivals include Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, the new
director of Tulane University's Newcomb Art Gallery. But 2014 also saw
the departure of New Orleans Museum of Art contemporary art curator
Miranda Lash, who is credited with opening up the venerable old
institution to all sorts of new and experimental work by figures ranging
from New York street artist Swoon to popular New Orleans electronic
musician Quintron's live-in residency as he composed new music inspired
by paintings from both the NOMA collection and the Saturn Bar. Lash also
organized the important Mel Chin retrospective,
Rematch, surveying his
vast output leading up to his remediation efforts in the St. Roch
neighborhood where he partnered with pioneer St. Claude gallerist Kirsha
Kaechele on behalf of inner city children suffering from longstanding
environmental lead poisoning.
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| Public Practice Gun Buyback |
For her part, Kaechele, after having to take leave of
her St. Roch efforts due to fallout from the recent recession, returned
with a gun buyback and street culture festival,
Public Practice,
sponsored by Australia's Museum of Old and New Art last October.
Meanwhile, institutions like the McKenna Museum of African art and the
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, quietly persevered in presenting high
quality art programming. But the organization that perhaps most
epitomizes quiet effectiveness is the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which
this year under the directorship of New Orleans native Gia Hamilton
completed the construction of 10 new studios and the renovation of eight
vintage residences for its studio residency program. It is also
noteworthy that 10 of the 58 international artists in Prospect.3 had
received grants from the foundation over the past two decades.
In
the new New Orleans art world, Prospect.3 is clearly the enigmatic
elephant in the room, and 2014 appears to be the year that Prospect
regained its footing after its spectacular, globally celebrated start in
2008, and somewhat shakier follow up iterations. Although lacking P.1's
iconic spectacles like Mark Bradford's dramatic Lower 9th Ward ark,
Mithra (Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan's big and beguiling neon barge sculpture,
You Belong Here,
top, is probably its closest equivalent) Prospect.3 makes ingenious use
of Nola's deep multicultural roots. Long celebrated as "America's most
European city," it is also paradoxically known as "America's most
Afro-Caribbean" city. Prospect.3 bridges those paradoxes in a truly
global art exposition that is as subtle and wide ranging, yet as deep,
as its Walker Percy inspired motto: "Seeing oneself in the other." ~D.
Eric Bookhardt
