Prospect1 New Orleans

As the accompanying publication to the largest exhibition of contemporary art ever assembled in the U.S., the Prospect.1 New Orleans catalogue is one of the most sought-after art books of 2008-09. Featuring new illustrated essays on New Orleans and its place in twenty-first century America by Prospect.1 organizer Dan Cameron, art historian Barbara Bloemink, journalist Lolis Eric Elie and curator Claire Tancons, the book also includes a fully illustrated section on each of the 81 participating artists, who include William Kentridge, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Fred Tomaselli, Cai Guo Qiang, Sanford Biggers, Tony Fitzpatrick, Amy Sillman, Malick Sidibe, Clare E. Rojas and Monica Bonvicini, among many others. Locating contemporary art in the cauldron that is New Orleans adds a new dimension to the book and its visuals: It's an incisive statement on art making and humanity today. Dan Cameron, the Director and Curator of Prospect.1 New Orleans, is an international New York-based curator who was inspired to organize an exhibition in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Cameron has been a frequent visitor to New Orleans since the late 1980s, and he organized the 1995 New Orleans Triennial for the New Orleans Museum of Art. In May 2007 Cameron took on the position of Visual Arts Director at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), one of the leading venues for new art in the South, and a principal venue for Prospect.1 New Orleans.

"Now in its fourth iteration, Prospect New Orleans draws its inspiration from the city itself, a place of graceful beauty that thrives in adverse conditions. By positioning itself in the city of New Orleans, the Prospect triennial aims to echo the city's history of cross-cultural fertilization. From Creole culture to jazz, in waves of migration and colonization, and as the American South's largest port, New Orleans is truly a cultural and historic nexus. 'Prospect.4' plumbs New Orleans's richly hybrid character to offer a diverse and exhilarating panoply of new and exciting art. Exhibition: New Orleans (various venues), United States (11.11.2017-25.02.2018)"--

In the 1990s, the New Orleans murder rate exploded. In 1996, 350 people were killed—the highest number in the city’s history, and the highest rate in the nation. In response to this crisis, gallery owner and artist Jonathan Ferrara and artist Brian Borrello, launched a powerful project: Guns in the Hands of Artists. Over sixty artists, including painters, glass artists, sculptors, photographers, and poets, used decommissioned guns taken off the city streets via a gun buyback program to express a thought, make a statement, open a discussion, and to stimulate thinking about guns and gun violence in America. As gun violence continues to devastate the nation on a daily basis, Guns in the Hands of Artists reemerged in 2012 as a community-based social activist art project that has since traveled to six cities across the US. Using art as a mirror for life and interweaving the works of thirty diverse artists with the voices of seventeen national thought leaders, this book is an important outgrowth of the exhibition and an extension of its efforts to employ art as a vehicle for dialogue, as a call to action, and—ultimately—as an agent of change. Essays by: Walter Isaacson, Senator Tim Kaine, Lupe Fiasco, Richard Ford, Joe Nocera, Trymaine Lee, Lolis Eric Elie, John M. Barry, Dan Cameron, Lucia McBath, Harry Shearer, Jonathan Ferrara, Brian Borrello, Maria Cuomo Cole, Michael Waldman, E. Ethelbert Miller, Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly.

“Davis’s accounts of small fights won by hot blood and cold steel are thrilling.”—The Wall Street Journal From master historian William C. Davis, the definitive story of the Battle of New Orleans, the fight that decided the ultimate fate not only of the War of 1812 but the future course of the fledgling American republic. It was a battle that could not be won. Outnumbered farmers, merchants, backwoodsmen, smugglers, slaves, and Choctaw Indians, many of them unarmed, were up against the cream of the British army, professional soldiers who had defeated the great Napoleon and set Washington, D.C., ablaze. At stake was nothing less than the future of the vast American heartland, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, as the ragtag American forces fought to hold New Orleans, the gateway of the Mississippi River and an inland empire. Tipping the balance of power in the New World, this single battle irrevocably shifted the young republic's political and cultural center of gravity and kept the British from ever regaining dominance in North America. In this gripping, comprehensive study of the Battle of New Orleans, William C. Davis examines the key players and strategy of King George's Red Coats and Andrew Jackson's makeshift "army." A master historian, he expertly weaves together narratives of personal motivation and geopolitical implications that make this battle one of the most impactful ever fought on American soil.

“Basquiat and the Bayou Presented by The Helis Foundation” is a focused exhibition of eight to ten paintings and drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat that consider the work of this important artist in light of his relationship to the American South.

EN MAS': Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean is an extension of the Independent Curators International (ICI) and Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (CAC) produced touring exhibition of the same title. The publication is an extension of the exhibition curated by Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson, but is also one of the first publications to give serious scholarly attention to contemporary art practices considering the connections between Carnival and performance, masquerade and social criticism, diaspora and transnationalism. EN MAS' will appeal to popular and scholarly audiences interested in Caribbean art, contemporary art, and performance studies. It fills a gap in two decades of exhibitions of contemporary Caribbean art that did not explicitly address Carnival as an artistic practice nor conceptualize distinct and historical forms of Caribbean art. EN MAS' includes scholarly essays by leading art historians Shannon Jackson and Kobena Mercer along with the two curators Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson, which offer formal and theoretical analyses of the artists' projects as well as explorations of Caribbean aesthetic practices and their impact on art and performance studies more broadly. In addition, the nine newly commissioned artist projects which are the basis for the exhibition will be fully illustrated and further enhanced by responsive essays from writers and curators in each hosting city such as Nicholas Laughlin from Port of Spain, Petrina Dacres from Kingston, Paul Goodwin from London and Thomas J. Lax from New York.

"This publication will accompany the international biennial, Prospect.3: Notes for Now, and will feature 50-55 artists participating in this international exhibition"--

Hundreds of years ago, Terrebonne Parish was known to Indigenous peoples as "Yakni Chitto," which means "Big Country." Located between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya, Monique's father's parents were born along Bayou Pointe-aux-Chenes into a small Houma community. Migrating to Lower St. Bernard Parish each winter to trap, they eventually bought land along Bayou Terre-aux- Boeufs. Monique spent a large part of her childhood with her grandmother, Armantine Marie Bil- liot Verdin, and in the 1990s began to document their family's deep connection to South Louisiana in black and white photographs. As she writes in the book, "I've been trying to make sense of the strange beauty left here—the magic that is entangled in the ugliest underbelly of a plantation economy surrendered to the petro-chemical industry." In conversation with writers, family members, and theatre-makers, Monique shares how multiracial collectives in South Louisiana have come together to honor and protect their homes and work towards a shared future.

Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.

Art at the edge of the Anthropocene, from a pioneering multimedia artist From social inequality to population growth to climate change, New Orleans-based multimedia artist Dawn DeDeaux (born 1952) does not shy from exploring difficult topics. One of the first American artists to connect questions about social justice to environmental concerns, DeDeaux responds to a future imperiled by runaway population growth, breakneck industrial development and the looming threat of climate change. Since the 1970s, she has been probing humanity's present and future through videos, performances and installations. This catalog, published for her first comprehensive museum exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, presents DeDeaux's work spanning five decades: from early multimedia works using radio and satellite to recent works from her MotherShipseries, in which she imagines humanity's escape from a destroyed Earth. For DeDeaux, art is always closely intertwined with philosophy, science and new technologies.