Prospect.6
Gesture to Home by Didier William
An installation of Haitian-born artist Didier William’s provocative mixed-media artworks
520 Royal Street
Tricentennial Wing
First Floor
New Orleans’s arts triennial Prospect.6 will showcase original work by the prominent Haitian-born artist Didier William, including large-scale paintings and sculptural works that are evocative of the Atchafalaya Basin and its distinctive cypress swamp forests.
Featured Artist
Didier William is mixed-media painter whose work focuses on constructions of blackness that include the nuances of diasporic identity, and his own experiences of immigrating to the United States from Haiti. His paintings undermine traditional aesthetic, racial, and gendered dichotomies in order to reimagine the personal and collective histories.
He earned a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007 and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2009. His work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL; the Bronx Museum of Arts, NY; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Museum at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR. William was a 2018 recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2020 recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and a 2023 recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant. He has taught at several institutions including Yale School of Art, Vassar College, Columbia University, UPenn, and SUNY Purchase. He is currently assistant professor of expanded print at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Prospect New Orleans
Founded in 2007, Prospect New Orleans Opens in new tabis a triennial citywide exhibition of contemporary art featuring artists from Louisiana and around the globe. For Prospect’s sixth iteration, co-artistic directors Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson highlight New Orleans’s role as a global city situated in the future, where questions around survival, continuance, and joy are being asked in advance of other places. New Orleans is also positioned as a city that reflects “the global majority,” a term used to describe the near-80 percent of the global population comprised of Indigenous, African, Asian, Latin American, and mixed-heritage peoples. The exhibition’s 51 artists, presented across 20-plus venues, honor this city’s history and offer opportunities for shared contemplation, discovery, and a reimagining of possibilities.
A harbinger can be foreboding. The origins of this word, however, point toward a host, a harbor, or a scout who makes a safe space for others. Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, the Harbinger Is Home looks to New Orleans as a signal of the future, in conversation with regions of the world that have long experienced the effects of climate change, labor migration, and histories of colonialism. Together these places offer sanctuaries and indicators of the yearnings and tensions that will define our collective future.
Plan Your Visit
Hours & Location
Museum: 520 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Admission
Admission is free, but tickets are required. Stop by the front desk or reserve tickets online. Ticket covers admission to all exhibitions and certain daily programs.
Contact Us
Museum: (504) 523-4662
Williams Research Center: (504) 598-7171
Mailing address: 533 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA, 70130
Previous Prospect Exhibitions
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Awash with Color: Seldom-Seen Watercolor Paintings by Louisiana Artists, 1789–1989
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