PROBLEMS FOR PROSPECT BIENNIAL
Prospect, the New Orleans biennial that began in 2008, has become entangled in fund-raising and administrative problems that are jeopardizing its future, Randy Kennedy reports for the New York Times. The event, which installed the work of more than eighty artists at sites throughout New Orleans, ended up badly overbudget after the bills came due in 2008, owing more than one million dollars more than it had raised.
Late last month, its founding director, Dan Cameron, announced that the next iteration of the event, Prospect.2, would be postponed until the fall of 2011 from this November because of fund-raising shortfalls. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans’s Doug MacCash has since reported that several directors who joined the biennial’s board in 2009 to help shore up the finances and raise money for Prospect.2 stepped down in February because of differences with Cameron over how the project should be managed. Two people with knowledge of the board resignations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, confirmed the basic account of the problems to the New York Times. The Times-Picayune reported that the biennial’s executive director, Barbara Motley, a theater owner who was hired last year to oversee the administrative side of the event so that Cameron could focus on selecting artists and helping them to realize their works, had also resigned. Motley told the newspaper that she believed in “organizational charts and management protocols,” while Cameron was “much more organic in his approach to management.”
Earlier this month, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans announced that it would not renew Cameron’s contract as its part-time visual-arts director. The center’s director said it needed someone to work full-time to oversee its art exhibitions.
