A second line led by the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club and Brass Band will commemorate the closing of Prospect.1 New Orleans at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Saturday, Jan. 17. The procession begins at 1 p.m. in front of the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and will make its way down Lelong Avenue before entering the museum and circling around the Great Hall and the McDermott Lobby, past the work of New Orleans-based Prospect.1 artists Willie Birch and Victor Harris and the Fi Yi Yi.

Admission to the museum, including public programs, is free to all through Jan. 18.

"This is a chance to celebrate the extraordinary artists that made Prospect.1 such a success, especially our locally based friends who stole the show, Willie Birch and Victor Harris," said New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bullard. "This historic biennial has significantly raised the profile of the entire New Orleans art community, from emerging artists to major institutions, and we are already eagerly anticipating Prospect.2 in 2010."

The Second Line is organized in cooperation with The Porch, the Seventh Ward cultural organization co-founded by Birch and Ron Bechet, artist and chair of Xavier University's art department.

On November 1, 2008, Prospect.1 New Orleans, the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States, will open to the public in museums, historic buildings, and found sites throughout New Orleans. Prospect.1 New Orleans has been conceived in the tradition of the great international biennials, and will showcase new artistic practices as well as an array of programs benefiting the local community. Over the course of its eleven-week run, Prospect.1 New Orleans plans to draw international media attention, creative energy, and new economic activity to the city of New Orleans.

New Orleanians, prepare yourselves: This year, the sights and sounds about town on All Saints Day will be even more unusual than they were the night before. At the edge of the French Quarter, near the Old U.S. Mint, last night’s revelers will hear Croatian-born, New Orleans-based sculptor Srdjan Loncar (pronounced Serge) brokering his own brand of wooden, money-covered money (what?!) to passersby, encouraging them to abscond with stacks of dollars in the briefcases he provides. (More)

The director and curator of Prospect.1 New Orleans is Dan Cameron, an international New York-based curator who was inspired to organize an exhibition in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Cameron had been a frequent visitor to New Orleans since the late 1980s, and he organized the 1995 New Orleans Triennial for the New Orleans Museum of Art. In May 2007, Cameron took on the position of Visual Arts Director at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), one of the leading venues for new art in the South, and a principal venue for Prospect.1 New Orleans. Cameron has organized numerous large-scale and international exhibitions, including biennials in Taipei and Istanbul.

It might be universally celebrated as the birthplace of jazz, but New Orleans is also where new international art first found an official footing in the U.S. From its inception in 1887 - Claude Monet was among the early exhibitors -- through 1914, when Italy and France sent their official artistic representatives for the last time, the Annual Exhibition of the Art Association of New Orleans functioned as America’s most sophisticated ongoing survey of new international art. (More)