NEW ORLEANS — Prospect New Orleans announced the appointment of Ebony G. Patterson as the Susan Brennan co-artistic director of the upcoming Prospect.6 art event. Patterson will collaborate with co-artistic director Miranda Lash to conceptualize and curate the sixth edition of Prospect New Orleans, which is slated to open in fall 2024.
Patterson has a long history with Prospect New Orleans. She was a participating artist in P.3: Notes for Now, curated by Franklin Sirmans, and was a curatorial council member for P.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, working with Artistic Director Trevor Schoonmaker to bring the triennial to life. As an artist, her expansive practice addresses visibility and invisibility through explorations of class, race, gender, youth culture, pageantry and acts of violence in the context of “postcolonial” spaces. She works across multiple media, including tapestry, photography, video, sculpture, drawing and installation, united by her consistent visual language and intention.
Her work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, with notable past solo and group exhibitions at Pérez Art Museum Miami, Speed Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Liverpool Biennial, São Paulo Art Biennial, the National Gallery of Jamaica, MCA Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Currently, Patterson is preparing for several major shows including solo exhibitions in 2023 at the New York Botanical Garden, and in 2025 at Arnolfini, Bristol’s International Center for Contemporary Arts in the UK. Several other upcoming group exhibitions include the MCA Chicago and the Whitney in 2022, the Frist and ICA Boston in 2023, where she currently has a monumental installation at their Watershed space. Prospect.6 is her first major curatorial project.
“I am greatly looking forward to bringing our collective curatorial vision to life for Prospect.6,” said Patterson in a press release. “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. 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.”
