New Orleans

From 2014 to 2020, ICI developed lasting cultural partnerships with curators and art spaces in New Orleans, strengthening independent cultural production and exchange networks within the city, and reaching beyond it, across the U.S. and towards Central America and the Caribbean.

In collaboration with the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans (CAC), ICI produced the traveling exhibition EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean (2014-18), and accompanying publication. In 2017 we partnered with the Joan Mitchell Center (JMC) to organize the Curatorial Assembly, a three-day retreat for six leading institutional curators working in the U.S. South. We also collaborated with the CAC and JMC, as well as Prospect New Orleans and the Keller Family Foundation on establishing the Curatorial Intensive in the city.

For five years, annual iterations of the Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans fostered emerging curatorial voices in locally and engaged directly with the cultural infrastructure of the region. The program empowered curators to shape their own art communities, and seize the cultural narrative of their city, through exhibitions, writing and organizing. Building on their participation in the Curatorial Intensive, curators based in New Orleans advanced their career with access to research grants and other professional opportunities; and many of those based outside of the city incorporated parts of New Orleans’ cultural life into their practice, exhibitions, and even into the collections of museums across the country.