The organizers of Prospect New Orleans have chosen artist Ebony G. Patterson to cocurate Prospect.6 alongside curator Miranda Lash. The Jamaica-born Patterson, who has in past years been involved with Prospect as both a participating artist and a curatorial council member, will be the first artist to curate an edition of the triennial. Further, her collaboration with Lash marks the first time a curator and artist have been charged with organizing the event. Prospect.6 is slated to open in fall 2024.
“I have always been moved by the history and culture of New Orleans, and how it occupies a unique space in the US, as a much closer reflection of the richness of the global majority,” said Patterson. “There are so many practices that knit New Orleans together that generate and reflect both local specificity and global concerns. Through bringing my artistic background and perspective to the role and our collaborations with artists, I plan to center the value of the artist.”
Prospect.6 is Patterson’s first major curatorial effort. Through a practice that encompasses tapestry, photography, video, sculpture, drawing and installation, she explores questions of visibility and invisibility through the lenses of class, race, gender, youth culture, pageantry, and acts of violence in the context of “postcolonial” spaces. Patterson has exhibited widely, at institutions including the Pérez Art Museum Miami; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore Museum of Art; National Gallery of Jamaica, MCA Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; she has participated in the Liverpool Biennial and the Bienal de São Paulo. Solo exhibitions of her work are planned at the New York Botanical Garden in 2023 and at Arnolfini, Bristol’s International Center for Contemporary Arts in the UK, in 2025.
Patterson met Lash, currently senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, in 2017, when Lash curated a major exhibition of Patterson’s work at the Speed Art Museum, where she was curator of contemporary art, and the two quickly discovered many shared curatorial interests.
“I feel grateful to work in partnership with Ebony as we chart the curatorial course for this next edition of Prospect,” said Lash. “Our conversations regarding curatorial approach, the significance of place, celebration and resilience, have led us in many exciting curatorial directions. I am thrilled to see where our collaboration takes us as we assume the responsibility of engaging with such a layered and complex local art ecosystem, which connects to major global concerns.”
