Tag Archives: Prospect New Orleans

The Road To: An Interview with Franklin Sirmans

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Published Daily Serving

June 6, 2012

Issues of under-financing, administrative inadequacy and lack of community support are some of the problems that can be found currently in multiple organizations in New Orleans. Prospect New Orleans, a nascent biennial founded in 2008 has had its share of these issues. However, new leadership and the selection of an artistic director whose passion and interests jive with many of the cultural and social issues in the city suggest a new maturity and professionalism to be found in the upcoming edition.

Presently the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Franklin Sirmans has taken on an additional role: Artistic Director for Prospect.3 in New Orleans. With recent news of the Biennial getting pushed back a year to 2014, this time presents a good opportunity to reflect with Sirmans on how he would like to see Prospect.3 define itself.

Franklin Sirmans. Photo by Julia Galdo.

Tori Bush: So, when did the opportunity to curate Prospect.3 arise and how does it relate to the work you’ve done at LACMA, the Menil Collection and Dia Center for the Arts?

Franklin Sirmans: The opportunity was presented after coming down to meet some members of the board via Dan Cameron, whose work I have admired. In some ways Prospect.3 might coincide with some of what I do at LACMA because that is where I am living and thinking and working closely with my colleagues Rita Gonzalez and Christine Y. Kim, who will advise me for Prospect.3, which, in many ways, I see as an extension of our everyday work.

Dia and the Menil are formative places for me, so the effect they will have might be there but far less noticeable than my work here at LACMA. Different things can, and have been done at those institutions keeping in mind the varied needs of three very different places covering this country, geographically and conceptually: New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. I try to be hyperaware of my surroundings. A show like NeoHooDoo played differently in New York, Houston and Miami though the overall framework was the same in each place. The resonance was different and that is the sort of texture I am interested in.

TB: New Orleans can be a politically savvy and wonderfully proud place. I was wondering how sensitive you are to that and how you will take the culture of New Orleans and Louisiana into account?

FS: I’ve never done an international biennial before so I have no personal blueprint but I anticipate a show that has a good deal to say about where it is. This region and its immediate surroundings within the southern United States, more specifically (and affectionately, at least in Houston, called the 3rd Coast), the entire Gulf of Mexico region excites the hell out of me and has been a subtext of some of my work in the past.

At this point I’m wide open, not letting any theme guide me, just trying to listen and look to artists and the world around us at the moment. My desire is to spend some time getting the lay of the land, meeting people and figuring out venues early on, hopefully by the end of the year. After that, we shall see.

TB: Recently, there have been some discussions around the lack of site specific installations in Prospect.2 which had been so impressive in Prospect 1. How do you plan on integrating the profound amount of architectural and historical space of the city into your installations?

FS: I think site specificity is an integral part of any biennial type of exhibition where the city itself is a living host and really the backdrop and conceptual background of the exhibition and this can happen in varied ways. It was refreshing to see the last Venice Biennale make the city a conceptual part of its main exhibition, Illuminations. Three of the very first works encountered in this biennial of contemporary art were 16th century paintings by the Venetian artist Tintoretto.

Tintoretto. The Stealing of the Dead Body of St. Mark, 1562-66; The Last Supper 1592-94. Shown on view at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

In this case, the selection of New Orleans by Dan Cameron was very specific. It is a unique city, in so many ways. We all know that it is the birthplace of jazz; it is a pivotal place in America’s multicultural heritage; and Prospect began, in part because of Katrina and I will go absolutely no further in trying define a place I only know as an outsider. The foundation of Prospect is very closely tied to a reading of the city as integral to the art showcased in its biennial. I hope to explore those roots in selecting and presenting artworks and artists who are also interested in that history.

Back to the question. A tough question for me right now. The New Orleans contemporary art scene is raw and energetic, judging from the energy that comes from the galleries and the artists’ initiatives that are in St. Claude in particular. One could imagine doing a show that embraces a certain guerilla style representative of the city and looks solely to the inspiration that artists might find in the nooks and crannies of the city. But, on the other hand, there is the desire to show an American-based biennial that also embraces in part the language of the international biennial exhibition and thus there are certain traditional spaces that will also play an integral role in delivering some sort of a cohesive thematic around the exhibition. To be more specific to your question, I don’t know. It’s hard to say right now.

TB: With so many troubling issues in New Orleans – a test tube education system, crumbling ecosystems and the highest rate of murder per capita in the United States in 2011 – do you think Prospect.3 will seek to address these complex topics?

FS:An art exhibition can be many things. Rather than specifically address each of those things, which is possible, let me say that I am sure there will be a lot of topical issues, some of them quite complex, addressed in the work of Prospect.3’s artists. I’m not trying to be coy. Just at this early stage, I think we need to stay a little bit open.

TB: After the massive exhibition, Pacific Standard Time, the west coast seems to be reclaiming their place in the canon of American art history in the 60’s and 70’s. New Orleans is also a city that has an important link to the artists working here in the 60’s and 70’s. How will you choose to pay homage to earlier artists while still surprising audiences with new artists? Is that even a consideration as you begin working?

FS: That’s a tough comparison. I’m not sure another city could lay claim in quite the same way that LA could on the late 50s and early 60s as a point of departure. It’s a part of history that has been overlooked but it’s one that has existed, so it’s hard to say reclaim. I think it just got trumpeted properly now.

I have to look deeper and I also have a network of people who know that New Orleans history better than I do, so I look forward to exploring it. Nonetheless, there’s an artist named Ed Clark who was born in Storyville in 1926, and I’d like to see his work in New Orleans now. I worked for him as a studio assistant during college in the late 1980s and learned a lot from him. He wasn’t so active in New Orleans but I think his route is instructive and interesting. He studied at the Art Institute from 1947-1951 and before that was in the US military. After his studies, he ended up living in Paris during the 1950s. It’s a consideration because I also think that no matter how international a show like this is, there has to be a connection between the artists and the public of New Orleans. I’d like to see artists here who have a real resonance with New Orleans and Ed is definitely one of those.

TB: What artists excite you right now? Why?

FS: Omer Fast: great storyteller and an artist, not unlike Steve McQueen and Pierre Huyghe, who can use the tools of film in a magical way to create poetic art. Also, the Propeller Group. They are based in Saigon and Los Angeles, in their own words, they are “manipulators of media language keen to reach a larger audience that takes the presentation of art beyond the world of gallery spaces and museums.” I find them very, very interesting in the way that they go about making work based in two cities on either side of the pacific and utilizing the strategies of international advertising and media.

Omer Fast, The Casting, 2007, Film Still, Fotograf Nicholas Trikonis.

TB: I realize it is very early on to say what specific themes might surround your Prospect.3 exhibits. However, can you tell us about some general themes you work with as you propose and develop new exhibits?

FS: I actually don’t think I can. Each exhibition is different. There are some cases where you might address one theme and that can become a template or a structure, something to jump off from. For instance, Trevor Schoonmaker and I created a template (Roebling Hall, 2006) for an exhibition that addresses the Beautiful Game, soccer, better known as football. It is something we will play with again in the future. But the next iteration will be quite different, different artists, different space.

TB: New Orleans is at a pivotal moment right now. The art scene is getting attention on a national scale, really for the first time ever. Do you believe the global attention is sustainable, and if so, what steps need to be taken to indeed sustain it?

FS: I do believe that Prospect is an important means of focusing that attention. New Orleans has great artists; a host of galleries showing great work in the city; artists showing in international fairs and world class museums; a big network of colleges and universities showing emerging artists and nourishing the potential artists of the future in addition to great self-taught art in abundance. If the people of New Orleans really choose to support all that, the legacy of arts in New Orleans should surely continue to grow.

Round Up: The Best of Prospect.2 New Orleans: Lorraine O’Grady

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Pelicanbomb. November 9, 2011

“Avant garde art doesn’t have anything to do with black people.” This statement made by one of Lorraine O’Grady’s acquaintances was the impetus for the artist’s 1983 performance piece Art Is…, which emphatically proclaimed that avant-garde art is black people, black neighborhoods, black culture, and black issues. The photographic documents of this performance are now on view at the New Orleans African American Museum as part of Prospect.2. They show O’Grady and 14 other African-American artists and dancers riding through Harlem’s African American Day Parade on a float resembling an ornate, gilded frame with bold black letters bearing the open-ended phrase “Art Is….” Participants on the float carried smaller frames, which they held up to the audience members as they passed along Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. O’Grady wrote years later in an email to art historian Moira Roth, “The people on the parade route got it. Everywhere there were shouts of: ‘That’s right. That’s what art is. We’re the art!’ And, ‘Frame ME, make ME art!’ It was amazing.”

A harbinger of identity politics in art, O’Grady’s use of the frame not only asked, “What is art?” but also, “Who chooses what is represented and how is it perceived by different viewers?” By putting black artists in charge of framing a predominantly black audience, the power of who makes art, who is art, and who perceives art is decided by the black community. In the history of western art, African Americans have been invariably depicted either as the other or not depicted at all. From the maid portrayed in Manet’s Olympia to the exclusion of black Abstract Expressionists from the famous photo of “The Irascibles” in 1950, the indelible lack of African Americans in the art historical canon is what gives credence to O’Grady’s performance. Years later, O’Grady would write, “[black bodies] function continues to be, by their chiaroscuro, to cast the difference of white men and white women into sharper relief.” By disallowing this fundamental contrast on that September day in Harlem, Art Is… redefined the relationship of African Americans both to and in art, allowing those present to celebrate themselves as works of art.

Tableau Vivant: A Wandering Retrospective

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                                                                                                                                                           Pelican Bomb. February 19, 2011

Silent figures held their poses as the usual flash and blare of police sirens flew by. Mythic compositions of elaborately costumed characters moved slowly, telling a living story or, literally, a tableau vivant. On November 13, the New Orleans Society for Tableau Vivant, along with other guest artists, performed nine varying scenes from atop a flatbed truck advancing along St. Claude Avenue as part of Prospect 1.5. Tableaux vivants were popularized in the 19th century as entertainment at parties for the wealthy. When the original Mardi Gras krewe, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, organized the first ever night parade in New Orleans, their crepuscular tableaux vivants floated down the streets, leading the way toward the Mardi Gras balls. This art form’s profound connection to the city’s past and contemporary landscape, as exemplified by its presentation in the burgeoning St. Claude arts district, is what made me fall in love with the Society’s rolling delights.

Produced by New Orleans Airlift and carefully selected by British curator Rosie Cooper to educate the viewer, each successive scene recorded the evolution of the tableau vivant beginning with Hal an Tow, a play based in Celtic tradition dating to the 16th century. A brilliant history followed: The Metamorphosis of Ovid as presented in 1878 by the Mistick Krewe of Comus, Mercure, which was created by Pablo Picasso, choreographer Léonide Massine, and composer Erik Satie in 1924, and  London-based artist Tai Shani’s translation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a current portrayal of Hollywood narcissism. In Anna Barham’s particularly beautiful interpretation of Proteus, four figures dressed in black gripped white polyhedrons recalling a Robert Morris sculpture. Airlift co-founder Delaney Martin concisely summed up the project saying: “Truly we pay tribute.” I was left wondering as to whether these tableaux signified a thoughtful history of the art form, an analysis of how our roots define our contemporary identities, or simply the mischievous work of a tipsy fairy. Perhaps the magic lies in some combination of all three.

The Next Phase: An Interview with Dan Cameron

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Daily Serving. December 22, 2011

Commonly founders of organizations are so caught up in the building, growing, and running of the organization that questions of the sustainability after said founder leaves are left unanswered. This is far from the truth for Curator Dan Cameron, the founder of Prospect New Orleans, an international art biennial in its second iteration. He kindly sat down with me to discuss his imminent departure from Prospect to become Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Tori Bush: How does it feel to leave Prospect after over five years founding and cultivating the biennial? Have you accomplished what you wanted to in New Orleans?

Dan Cameron: I’m very happy with what I’ve accomplished in New Orleans. I think that the biennial has a strong future ahead of it, and New Orleans is well on its way to being the biennial capital of the U.S., with the far-reaching economic and cultural effects that this will bring with it. My goal was to contribute substantively to the city’s recovery after Katrina, and I think I’ve succeeded. That said, there’s a real sadness, or perhaps wistfulness, in bidding adieu to a city that’s been my home for the past years, and where I now own a beautiful house that I have every intention of moving back into once my work in California is complete. The other day I drew up the list of friends to invite to my going-away party, and was very happy to discover that I now have more people I consider friends in New Orleans than anywhere else in the world, including New York, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

TB: New Orleans certainly has a way of getting under your skin and making you come back. There has always had a vibrant arts scene here but Prospect has in many ways acted as a catalyst for alternative artist spaces. How would you like to see the local visual arts community grow and develop in the future?

DC: I truly hope that the City really gets involved in recognizing and supporting visual art in a meaningful way, instead of sitting on the sidelines or being petulant, which is what I’ve had to cope with for most of the past five years. From my perspective, the biggest problem is that New Orleans does almost nothing to support or even recognize its local visual artists, and yet they bring a tremendous economic and cultural benefit to the city, especially vis-a-vis the St. Claude district, which now constitutes the critical mass of artist-run spaces for the entire country. I also think that the sooner some local institutions and foundations begin trying to follow best practices in their fields, the better for all concerned, as I’ve encountered serious resistance to improvement in this area. When you look at how beneficial a turnover at the top has benefited institutions like NOMA and the African American Museum, it becomes clear that new blood is needed pretty much across the board. Finally, I hope that local supporters will begin coming out of the woodwork to embrace a phenomenon that most informed observers believe is very important to the city’s future as a cultural destination.

TB: Well, Mitch Landrieu, the Mayor of New Orleans has been a very vocal supporter of the arts. More financial support is needed though and Prospect has brought the attention to New Orleans that allows local artists a chance to show their work at another level. That being said, how do you see Prospect evolving in the future? What changes do you hope to see and what would you like to remain the same?

DC: We currently raise more than 90% of Prospect’s funds from out of state, which is not sustainable in the long run, and I’d like to see our fundraising and marketing on the ground locally become as effective as they are on the national and international fronts. Other than that, now that we’ve rotated to a system where’s a permanent Executive Director and rotating Artistic Directors — both of national stature –, I think we have a template that will work. I especially hope that the independent initiatives, such as the Satellites, will continue to grow, as this gives visitors a special insight into the city’s unique art scene.

TB: I’m looking forward to seeing what Franklin Sirmans does as the new artistic director for Prospect 3. You said at one point that you would stay at Prospect until Prospect 5. Why did that change? Will the rotating curators ensure that Prospect will not become myopic in scope?

DC: The plan had been to begin revolving Artistic Directors as soon as possible, & I hadn’t planned to personally curate Prospect past the second edition, so that’s not really a change. The real change is that both the Board and I began to understand over the past year that bringing in a strong Executive Director who knows and understands the visual arts community nationally, and who can guide the organization through the next editions, would be far more effective than having a curator — me — trying to fill the role of Executive Director at a time when a very different skill set is required.

TB: New Orleans and Orange County have pretty diametric cultures. Can you tell me a little about how you consider art in the context of culture when in New Orleans and Orange County?

DC: It’s a bit misleading when you say Orange County, since the museum’s mission has always focused on southern California, which I think people can identify more easily. In a nutshell, southern California is where the focus of new art has shifted in this country over the past ten years, and the region where I’ll be working has a strong history of vibrant collecting and groundbreaking exhibition practice, and that’s very exciting for me. Obviously, the vernacular culture that is so rich in New Orleans does not exist anywhere else in the U.S., and I don’t expect to be caught up in any local equivalent of second lines or Mardi Gras, because it’s pretty apparent they don’t exist where I’ll be. On the other hand, New Orleans and Los Angeles have a lot in common, in that they are probably the fastest growing art communities in the U.S., so getting to feel like I’m on the cusp of something truly new and vital will be consistent with what I’ve felt in developing Prospect. What I’m probably most excited about is being back in a museum setting, doing ambitious curatorial work that, when I did Prospect, was only visible three months out of every two years.

TB: You’ve worked with OCMA before too, right? You curated the Peter Saul exhibit there in 2008. How was that experience? What do you hope to bring to Orange County Art Museum, a museum that has lacked a deputy curator for three years?

DC: Yes. The Director of OCMA, Dennis Szakacs, and I worked together at the New Museum from 1996 to 2001, and together we guided that museum to the point where it could become what it is today. There are very ambitious building plans in the works for OCMA, which was the main attraction of the job, and since neither Dennis & I were around to see the New Museum reopen in 2007, I’m very gratified that this time we’ll be able to take a project to its completion.

TB: What are some of the highlights of OCMA’s collection? Can you discuss some of the contemporary trends going on in California right now?

DC: This is a question best asked once I’m settled, since I was not asked to become an expert in OCMA’s collection prior to moving there. As far as trends in southern California are concerned, I believe that the huge success of Pacific Standard Time, a series of contiguous museum exhibitions about the art of the region, will be felt nationally & internationally for a long time to come.

TB: In 1984 OCMA launched the California Biennial. The Hammer Museum and LAXART recently announced the Los Angeles Biennial will open in 2012. How will this be a challenge to OCMA and is there a need for two geographically and temporally similar biennials?

DC: I do think there’s room for two biennials, and since it looks like the Hammer’s initiative will be a purely local endeavor, there is a clearly a lot of room for revisiting the California Biennial’s mandate, and developing something innovative to demonstrate that it’s still the pre-eminent survey exhibition in the region. Because I’ve already done so much work in these areas, I can say that I’m quite struck by how miniscule a role Asian and Latin American art plays in the programs of the LA Big Three — LACMA, MOCA and the Hammer –, and that is something I’m very interested in addressing at OCMA.

TB: Sounds like you have a framework for some potential shows. Many of your exhibits often have a stance on social and political issues. How will you continue to spur public debates in your new position?

DC: That remains to be seen. My interest in social issues in art goes back to 1982, when I organized the first museum exhibition of gay and lesbian art in the U.S.A., and social justice formed a bit part of both my eleven years’ of programs at the New Museum, and the biennials I did in Istanbul and Taipei. In fact, those experiences were essential to my deciding to shape Prospect the way I did. That said, southern California has its own world and its own issues, and I wouldn’t presume to comment on how I’ll grapple with all that until I’ve been there for a minute.

TB: You’ve been based out of New York, New Orleans and now California. Do you feel that there is unity in the American art scene or does each part of the country represent wildly different trends? Can you discuss how the globalization of the art world has affected how and where artists can work?

DC: It’s not a simple binary. For most of the 1990s, it was believed that the global trends in art were wiping out the possibilities of what used to be labeled ‘regional art’ in this country. In the past ten years, however, I think we’ve witnessed more of a decentralization — sorry, but globalization is probably the most misused word in art jargon today — of the art world, in which one or two capitals have been replaced by multiple capitals, and with that, there is now a growing awareness that a lot of significant art doesn’t take place in capital cities at all. The timing of Prospect was meant, in large part, to capitalize in that change.

TB: Do you have a personal rubric of excellence you hope to achieve when curating a new show? If so, what is that rubric?

DC: In curating there is a long and hidden research phase that requires floating lots of trial balloons and shooting down most of them. What I can say is that I try to make exhibitions that will stay with people for years after they’ve seen it, and of course I want to showcase emerging of under-valued artists whose work will surprise and delight the viewer.

TB: Peter Schjeldahl recently said the artist/critic creates and affirms values to the degree of his or her individuality. Do you think this also could be said for a curator? If so, what are the values that you hope to affirm?

DC: I think Peter’s position is a very American one in that it raises the individual above all else, but my experience traveling the world has been very different than his, and I’ve gradually come around to the idea that my self-improvement also requires the betterment of the social environment in which I live. I don’t think that art belongs to the elite class that has historically has provided all of its patronage and most of its audience, but that it belongs to everybody, and bridging that gap between the insider/specialist and the outsider/layperson has been an ongoing effort of mine for many years now.

TB: Thanks Dan for taking the time to talk. I’m sure we will see some great show’s coming out of OCMA very soon.