The Prospect triennial in New Orleans has appointed Miranda Lash, a rising curator with close ties to the city, as the artistic director for its sixth edition, which is scheduled to open in fall 2024.
Raised in a Spanish-speaking Latinx household in Southern California, Lash’s appointment as artistic director of Prospect.6 makes her one of the only Latinas ever to curate a major art biennial in the United States. She is known for a curatorial practice that looks at how artists hold and maintain various identities across geographies, communities, and histories.
“I am greatly looking forward to returning to New Orleans for Prospect.6,” Lash said in a statement. “In many ways this is a homecoming, as New Orleans’ traditions, themes and artists have always influenced my practice. I find myself continuously returning to the lessons and inspiration given to me by this special place on a daily basis.”
Lash is currently senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, where she has worked since 2020. From 2014 to 2020, she was a curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and from 2008 until 2014, she was the founding curator of modern and contemporary at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She also served on the curatorial council for Propsect.4 in 2017, which was organized by Trevor Schoonmaker.
Lash is currently at work on a major survey and monograph of Tomashi Jackson that will open next year. Her previous curatorial credits include exhibitions of some of today’s leading artists, including Eamon Ore-Giron, Jason Moran, Rashaad Newsome, Keltie Ferris, Camille Henrot, and Mel Chin. In 2016, she co-curated, with Trevor Schoonmaker, “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art,” which opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, before traveling to the Speed.
In a statement, artist Ron Bechet, a New Orleans native who was included in the most recent edition of Prospect, said, “In her time in New Orleans Miranda built a wonderfully layered, substantial, and meaningful love and understanding of New Orleans and its complications in paradise. She understands how the city uniquely reflects the range of beauty and pain that is our humanity.”