Prospect New Orleans is thrilled to announce the appointment of Miranda Lash as the Susan Brennan Artistic Director of Prospect.6. Building off Lash’s long history in New Orleans, and with Prospect’s partners and artists, the appointment is an exciting development as preparations for the upcoming triennial commence. P.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow was open to great acclaim from October 22, 2021 to January 23, 2022. Prospect.6 is currently slated to open in Fall 2024.
Currently, Lash is the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and has organized major exhibitions of the work of Eamon Ore-Giron, Jason Moran, Rashaad Newsome, Keltie Ferris, and Mel Chin. Previous posts include the Speed Art Museum, where she was Curator of Contemporary Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, where she was the founding Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
“Miranda will bring extensive knowledge of both our city and organization to the next Prospect,” said Nick Stillman, Executive Director of Prospect New Orleans. “We are honored to collaborate with her as her curatorial vision comes to fruition over the next two years.”
Raised in a Spanish-speaking Latinx household in Southern California, Lash’s practice has long been concerned with forging new connections between disparate international perspectives, communities, and histories, imbuing all of her curatorial work with scholarly rigor and care. Her curatorial work centers international dialogues and artists who often occupy a variety of geographies and identities. As a citywide triennial dedicated to connecting art to an audience of all backgrounds, Prospect New Orleans is thrilled to be working with her.
“I am greatly looking forward to returning to New Orleans for Prospect.6. In many ways this is a homecoming, as New Orleans’ traditions, themes and artists have always influenced my practice, said Miranda Lash, the Susan Brennan Artistic Director of Prospect.6. “I find myself continuously returning to the lessons and inspiration given to me by this special place on a daily basis, and am thrilled to collaborate with artists and facilitate international artistic dialogues in a city I care for so deeply.”
As the founding curator of Modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Lash curated over twenty exhibitions during her six-year tenure, including the traveling retrospective exhibition Mel Chin: Rematch, among others. Coming to know New Orleans in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Lash is intimately familiar with the local cultural landscape and has worked closely with artists from New Orleans and Louisiana for much of her career. Having called New Orleans her home for seven years, she is uniquely positioned to unite local and national artistic projects for the next edition of the triennial.
“I am thrilled to hear that Miranda Lash will be returning to New Orleans to lead the curatorial efforts for the sixth iteration of Prospect New Orleans. 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,” said Prospect.5 Artist and New Orleans native Ron Bechet. “She understands how the city uniquely reflects the range of beauty and pain that is our humanity. I am confident she will bring the range of this knowledge to select projects and artist practices that will source the city and all of its layers as a tool in discourse about our humanity and maybe what to do with it.”
As New Orleans’ citywide triennial, Prospect invites curators from across the contemporary art world to explore underappreciated histories, champion the lives and works of artists both from New Orleans and around the world, and explore new sites and contexts for exhibiting contemporary art. Past Artistic Directors include Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi (P.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow); Trevor Schoonmaker (P.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp); Franklin Sirmans (P.3: Notes for Now); and Prospect’s founder, Dan Cameron (P.1, P1.5, P.2).
About Miranda Lash
Miranda Lash is the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Lash has organized a wide range of museum exhibitions including Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lighting/ Rivalizando con el relampágo; Jason Moran: Bathing the Room with Blues; Keltie Ferris: *O*P*E*N*; the traveling retrospective Mel Chin: Rematch; Camille Henrot: Cities of Ys; Rashaad Newsome: King of Arms; Swoon: Thalassa; and Quintron and Miss Pussycat: Parallel Universe, Live at City Park. In 2016 Lash and Trevor Schoonmaker co-organized the acclaimed exhibition Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art. From 2008 to 2014, Lash was the founding Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her upcoming project Tomashi Jackson: The Poetics of Relation will present a major museum survey and monograph of Jackson’s work in 2023.
Lash currently serves as Vice President on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation and is a 2022 Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She has been a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and a member of the artistic director’s Curatorial Council for Prospect.4. She holds a BA with honors from Harvard University in the History of Art and Architecture and an MA from Williams College from the Graduate Program in the History of Art.