New Orleans saw Prospect.6, new venues and more in 2024 | Events

On the opening weekend of New Orleans’ art triennial Prospect.6, the art expo held a ceremony at Harmony Circle. Artist Raul de Nieves had topped the pedestal with a giant red heart, and he created carnivalesque figures from Mardi Gras beads for the four urns at its base. The Edna Karr High School marching band thundered through two loops around the circle before climbing its steps. Then Laveau Contraire and the drag wrestling troupe Choke Hole ascended to the pillar for some of their own theatrics, and local writer Antonio Garza, as the figure Love Bird, claimed the space as a new vision of hope, unity and love for the duration of the expo.

It was quite a spectacle, tying together and saluting various strains of New Orleans art and culture.

It was a year of giant spectacle in entertainment in New Orleans, especially for music, with the Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift bringing a couple of the biggest acts in the world to New Orleans. But it was a busy year on stages of all sizes in the city, and there was much to build on. Here is a look back at some of the special events, developing trends and changes in the cultural landscape in 2024.

Prospect New Orleans was founded in 2007 as a response to the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures, and it featured installations like Mark Bradford’s giant ark-like “Mithra” in a flood-demolished block in the Lower Ninth Ward. It’s a challenge to match the scope of that expo’s 81 artists and the timeliness of its content. But Prospect.6 got off to a great start.

Prospect is now a triennial, and despite the gap in iterations, it arrives in grand fashion. Prospect.6 curators Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson laid out an expansive expo that reflects the ambitions of the event’s first iteration. Public installations are spaced from the Batture, along the riverfront above Audubon Park, to the Ford Motor Plant in Arabi. The plant has been used for movie set storage, but now it’s home to the “Mexica Falcon,” a fusing of the cosmologies of the Aztecs and the Star Wars universe, featuring a rune-carved Millennium Falcon constructed onsite from adobe.

The expo fills museum and art spaces, like the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and CAC, as well as smaller galleries and venues. Participating artists have come from places linked to New Orleans, from the Caribbean to Vietnam and elsewhere. Of the roughly 50 artists, 42 produced new work for the expo, and many were chosen for how their work would resonate with the triennial’s themes and south Louisiana history.

Titled “The Future is Present, the Harbinger is Home,” it digs into themes of immigration, colonialism and more. Much of this reflects the greater contemporary art world’s current focuses. The world’s senior biennial in Venice recently closed, and Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa explored immigration and perceptions of the “global south” with the theme “Foreigners Everywhere.” Lash and Patterson prefer the term “global majority” to global south, and their expo of mostly younger artists brings Prospect into the art world’s global conversation.

Prospect is relatively young compared to Venice’s 130-year-old tradition, but it’s the most senior multi-venue biennial or triennial in the U.S. It’s open through Feb. 2, 2025, and there will be more performances and events on the closing weekend.

New Orleans’ art world also marked a big anniversary. The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden has been celebrating its 20th anniversary all this year. There was a festival and gala in November, and there were additions of new works, including sculpture by Wangechi Mutu, who is based out of Brooklyn and Nairobi, Kenya. NOMA also hosted a large solo exhibition of her work this year.

The local performing arts scene saw some changes in venues.

The New Marigny Theatre officially opened this year. The building is yet another former church that has been transformed into a performing arts space, joining the Marigny Opera House and the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Justice. New Marigny Theatre has hosted plays and musicals as well as chamber music and classical music performances. The theater also is used as a rehearsal space by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. This week, local drag and burlesque duo Kitten N’ Lou bring their touring “Jingle All the Gay” holiday show to the theater (see page 5).

The Dew Drop Inn was reborn, as a hotel, bar and performing space. Developer Curtis Doucette Jr. renovated the landmark music spot, which hosted and featured touring artists like Ray Charles and Little Richard and local musicians like Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas when segregation and Jim Crow denied Black performers access to other hotels and venues. The new Dew Drop hosts music and entertainment and has been a stop for some Social Aid and Pleasure Club second lines.

The Broadside continues to evolve. Brian Knighten opened the adjoining Broad Theater in 2016. During the pandemic, he pivoted to open an outdoor theater, in the style of an old drive-in theater. In recent years, it’s become more of a music venue, and he’s built out the space with a bar and covered areas. The amenities make it a popular spot for small festivals. A stand-alone restaurant just opened there. Named Nikkei, it’s a Japanese tavern from the people behind Carmo in the Warehouse District (see Year in Dining, page 25).

Sports Drink has become a tiny but mighty comedy venue, with room for two-to-three dozen patrons. This year, it hosted former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Luke Null, “All Fantasy Everything” podcaster David Gborie and recently a homecoming show for Mark Normand. Its signature wall of orange coolers also will be the backdrop for a few comedy specials recorded there.

The comedy scene has grown in fits and starts in New Orleans, with open mics at music venues and bars still part of the mix. The Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo festival added a comedy tent last year, and this year got a bigger tent and expanded its offerings to cabaret acts. The comedy club Comedy House has been home to many local comics, and an important venue to festivals like the new LGBTLOL comedy festival, which debuted last year. But the Warehouse District club quietly closed not long after November’s Hell Yes Fest. It’s unclear whether it will produce shows or relaunch elsewhere.

The burlesque and drag scene continues to grow. The AllWays Lounge & Theatre is the epicenter of the two, often with two different shows a night, and variety from nerdlesque to opera-themed burlesque, as well as variety shows with circus arts and more.

But the popularity of burlesque and variety shows has grown to larger venues. Performers and producers LadyBEAST and Vivacious Miss Audacious both produced multiple polished, large-scale, themed shows at the Joy Theater. The spectacles include burlesque artists, aerialists, acrobats and other circus arts performers.

Carnival had another busy year, and one of the continuing trends is the growth of smaller downtown parades. With the growth of the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus, krewedelusion and Krewe Boheme, new small krewes crop up with ease, and that seems to demand new parades. This year, Krewe Mosaique debuted, featuring almost a dozen krewes, many of which also participated in other parades, like the Krewe of Conus and Darth AF. While the parade calendar used to be relatively sparse between Jan. 6 and the final three weekends prior to Fat Tuesday, now there’s plenty of room on the calendar and interest from makers and viewers of DIY parades.

But some of the biggest Carnival news came after Ash Wednesday, as the New Orleans City Council examined some lingering issues. The Krewe of Nyx ballooned to superkrewe size and shrunk to a shadow of itself after an exodus of membership, due to internal disagreements over support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Nyx won’t get a parade permit for 2025. Instead, the Krewe of ALLA will move into the Wednesday night slot. And while crowds are sure to line the parade routes, we’ll see if the city reins in Krewe of Chad behavior, like claiming public space or continuing to improvise neutral ground toilets, or if parade-goers share space more equitably.