Doesn't Ring

I am all for revitalizing New Orleans, the painful lack of progress in the humanity department has been harsh. Bringing bowl games and corporate conferences back to the city (a presidential debate would have been nice) is money in the bank and people in the restaurants, but it isn't really helping the peripheral infrastructure.

Everett Taasevigen, 2007

Artists and photographers have used the desolate landscape of post-hurricane N'awlins as an invigorating point to leap from into an existential void. A top-to-bottom tag on a retaining wall of the red letter HINDSIGHT has made the rounds on the internet and was briefly seen on the Anthony Bourdain program No Reservations. Performing Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot on a city streetcorner in the Ninth Ward was a stroke of genius by Creative Time.

Coming soon, the next chapter in the revitalization-cum-exploitation of destruction that is the rest of the world's cockeyed response to the Hurricane Katrina / Bush-n-Brownie disaster. Prospect.1 New Orleans will attempt to pull off "the largest international exhibition of contemporary art ever presented in the United States."

Is this feasible? Dan Cameron, former senior curator of the New Museum, director of the 2003 Istanbul Biennial and CAC New Orleans director of visual arts since May 2007, intends to raise $2 million in 8 months. "Prospect.1 received $600,000 in seed money from a pair of art-world benefactors: insurance magnates Peter Lewis (former president of the board of directors of the Guggenheim Museum) and his former wife Toby Devan Lewis (a board member of the New Museum) in November 2006." via Times-Picayune

He does have New York monies and press behind him, but can he fill in the gap? Seems like the makings of a deus-ex-machina failure to me. Can New York come to NO and make a difference? Can Los Angeles? Do either of them care about the hardest hit, most of them wandering the country (Houston population of 100,000) instead of going to art exhibits in the former US Mint? I'm a debbie downer I know. But I am hopeful about both the visitor estimate of 100,000 and the contention that half of that will be Louisiana residents.

This would require 18% of the New Orleans population or 1.2% of the total population of Louisiana to visit Prospect.1 in it's 11 week run; along with 50,000 globetrotters fixin' to drop a load on the economy with their champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

By contrast, if half of the 1.2 million visitors to all Houston museums in any 11 weeks were from the city, that would be nearly 30% of the population or 2.5% of the state population. I hope the residents of New Orleans are as voracious for art as we are.

Fotofest estimates that 300,000 people will visit the 114 exhibits in Houston this March and April, and even if it is 'just pictures' that's three times the size of Cameron's "largest exhibition of contemporary art ever". Provincial as it is to proffer this total bullshit line, he may be referring to big name talents, the likes of which will be already anointed by the Holy Art Church of New York Money. Whoopee. Eh, it brings in the rich bitches. Whatever.

How can NY royalty Dan Cameron pull it off? Using "found spaces" in his sales pitch, the curator will definitely take advantage of all the wrecked spaces, abandoned homes and weed strewn lots to annex the gutter punk style. He'll call up installation and performance artists to magnify their works in front of the most "real" backdrop they've ever seen. Toucan Sam will be flown down to help mink fur wearing enema addicts find the main event through their Xanex haze.

Call all those critics you know, boy- and hop back on the Artforum horse. Careers are made on paper not in reality, so he may be able to take some good photos and get the sophism flowin' without having to back up his results in person.

Oh yeah, good luck with the 2 million bucks too.