Curator's Choice

We can all recognize a Rodrigue or marvel at a Michalopoulos. But when it comes to identifying the most exciting emerging artists at work in Mississippi and Louisiana, it’s good to ask the folks on the front line. So we asked the curators of the state’s best-known art institutions to recommend the up-and-coming and less-well-known artists whose work thrills them. If these folks are watching them, it’s a safe bet that you can expect to see some of their work coming soon to a gallery or museum near you. 

Laura Blereau, Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans & Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette

Laura Blereau is the Curator and Coordinator of Academic Programming at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans. She holds an MFA in conceptual art from Pratt Institute, and a BFA in painting from Louisiana State University. Formerly the Curator of Exhibitions at the Hilliard University Art Museum, Laura is a specialist in art and technology. Blereau has organized hundreds of projects with roster artists of the Bitforms Gallery, where she was a Director from 2005 to 2015. 

Laura's recommendations: “Inspired by the climates of Arizona and South Louisiana, Karen deClouet (karendeclouet.com) makes brightly colored compositions that merge landscape painting with abstraction. These works explore the absence and presence of water as well as its physical effects on the picture plane. Earlier this year, she won an Artspark grant from the Acadiana Center for the Arts (AcA) and Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA). The artist-run gallery space Basin Arts also opened a solo exhibition of her work this October.

“A recent Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Loyola University in New Orleans, Julie Morel (julie.incident.net) is a designer and artist from France whose visual practices are conceptually driven. Her projects are rooted in language and take on a wide range of platforms, from drawings and publications to installation art, internet art and time-based media. Earlier this fall, Morel’s work was featured in the exhibition Ephemera Obscura, curated by Aaron Levi Garvey at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans. She also published Shake What Your Mama Gave You, a book that explores the global context of art, community, and the environment.

“John F. Simon, Jr. (numeral.com) is a great artist from Shreveport, Louisiana, who is now based in New York. He is a pioneer of the new media and software art genres, and in 2000 his generative work “Every Icon” was included in the Whitney Biennial exhibition. Simon’s work is key for young artists in our region to know because of its special place in the American technological avant-garde. He’s a disciplined artist and very interested in systems of automatic drawing. Most recently, Simon released a book called Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation published by Parallax Press. It explains how the relationship between mark-making and consciousness continues to inspire his work.

“Cullen Washington, Jr. (cwashingtonstudio.com) is a non-objective abstract painter from Alexandria, Louisiana. His irregularly shaped collages integrate canvas, tape, and studio detritus. The work is energetic and, much like a quilt, portrays a sense of improvisation with objects that are worn and lovingly used, homemade. Multiple solo exhibitions of his painted constructions have been featured in New York, including a show this fall at the fashionable Lesley Heller Gallery. Pratt Institute in Brooklyn recently hired him to teach graduate level courses in Painting and Drawing, and Washington’s résumé of past art residencies is outstanding. Despite these achievements, his work seems fairly under the radar in our region. Washington is definitely one to watch, especially as an LSU alum and as an important artist of African American heritage.”

Elizabeth Weinstein, Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge

Elizabeth Weinstein is Director of Art Interpretation and Museum Curator of the Louisiana Art & Science Museum, a position she has held since 2002. She holds a lengthy exhibition record with a current focus on art that encourages multidisciplinary thinking. Elizabeth has been involved in Louisiana’s cultural scene for over twenty years and recently was honored by the Louisiana Association of Museums for her contributions to the museum field. She holds an MA in Post War and Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute/Manchester University, England, as well as a BA in Fine Art-Painting and a BA in Psychology from Tulane University.

Elizabeth recommends: “Brandon Ballengée (brandonballengee.com) is living in Arnaudville and moved here in 2016. He is an artist who is uniquely situated smack in the middle of art and science, drawing upon both disciplines to make visually compelling and thought-provoking artworks. While he has a strong exhibition record already built up, he is definitely worth watching as an artist who has adopted Louisiana as home and is not yet known here. But his star is rising. I definitely think he is an artist to watch.”

Note: Works from Ballengée’s series Alchimie de la Douleur are on display in the exhibit Art I-10, currently at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette.

Courtney Taylor, LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge

Courtney Taylor is curator at LSU Museum of Art. Taylor’s recent exhibition and catalogue projects include Broken Time: Sculpture by Martin Payton, which is on view this October and November and When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan

Courtney recommends: “I’ll continue to follow the career of LSU graduate Katrina Andry (katrina-andry.com). I appreciate the confrontational nature of her work and its dark playfulness challenging stereotypes. I think she’ll be an important female voice working at the intersection of race and gender in Louisiana. Her large-scale color reduction woodcuts are impressive, and I’m interested to watch as she continues to explore installation and other media. She lives and works in New Orleans.”

Kimberly Coleman, McKenna Museum of African American Art, New Orleans

Kimberley Coleman is a native New Orleanian, Curator and Historian. She’s been working at the McKenna Museums for the past four years.

Kimberly recommends: “By using a historical context to inform his work, Vitus Shell (theshellofvitus.com) is able to directly insert himself into the conversation on race and equitability. His work, a direct reflection on both the past and present Black political struggles, is surprisingly deeply intimate and introspective.

“John Isiah Walton's work (johnisiahwalton.com) is often satirical, using blunt humor to comment on American society. With his loose style and biting commentary, John is able to connect with entities larger than himself. In a way, he uses art and humor to contextualize the world around him, making events, people, and policies into something he can manipulate.

Katie Pfohl, New Orleans Museum of Art

Katie A. Pfohl is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art.  She completed her Ph.D. in American Art at Harvard University in 2014, and has a wide range of curatorial experience including positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Prior to arriving at NOMA, she served as the Curator at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge. 

Katie recommends: “Zarouhie Abdalian (zarouhie.com) often works with sound to create haunting, immersive art experiences that consider our relationship to labor and the built environment. For a project for [the triennial citywide art exhibition] Prospect.3, she filled New Orleans’ African American Museum of Art, Culture and History with the sounds of the tools used for the building’s construction, reflecting on history, memory, and the passage of time.”

Cristina Molina and Jonathan Traviesa (nolafront.org) are both members of The Front Gallery in St. Claude and often work collaboratively. Their exhibition Sad Tropics at The Front last year was one of the best shows I saw in the city. For this project, they explored the “tropics” as both landscape and metaphor, considering the connections between the many regions and cultures often united under the term ‘tropics,’ from Louisiana to Central and South America and the Caribbean.”

Note: From November 11—December 3, Molina and Traviesa will have work at The Front, in the group exhibition Full House.

Bradley Sumrall, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans

Bradley Sumrall has curated over fifty exhibitions, and writes about the art and culture of the American South. He is Curator of the Collection at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

Bradley recommends: “Shawn Hall (shawnhall.org) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is deeply rooted in ecology. From her organic abstract paintings to her immersive installations, she maintains a focused narrative on nature and aesthetics. Highlights include How to Build a Forest, Pastoral Universe, and large gridded paintings such as BIOlogy. She was awarded a 2017 Pollack-Krasner Grant. There’s a short interview I conducted with her in 2010 here. 

“In my opinion, Horton Humble (hortonhumble.net) is one of the most talented young painters producing in the South today. The trajectory of his painting is clear and progressive, with a strong emphasis on process and narrative abstraction combined with a natural sense of color and composition. He has had a recent solo exhibition at the Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi. He is a native of New Orleans, and a founding member of LEVEL Collective.”

Trevor Schoonmaker, Artistic Director of Prospect.4; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University

Trevor is the Artistic Director of New Orleans’ international contemporary art triennial, Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. He is also the Chief Curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Hired in 2006 as its first contemporary art curator, he has been instrumental in shaping the museum’s curatorial vision and contemporary art collection.

Trevor recommends:  “Darryl Montana is the Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Mardi Gras Indian tribe, or “gang.” Every year, members of these Black Indian masking gangs design and fabricate their own, highly elaborate suits. Suits traditionally consist of a large headpiece (“crown”), satin boots, a sleeveless vest, an apron, and leggings made of cardboard, poster board, and/or canvas encrusted with ornamental mate­rials such as sequins, bugle beads, custom-dyed turkey and ostrich feathers, marabou, ropes of feathered boas (“hackles”), and multifaceted plastic jewels.

“Montana has pushed forward his father “Tootie” Montana’s tradition of innovation and excellence in suiting. Over the years, Darryl’s sculptural elements have become more complex and ingenious. He determines the concept of a suit approximately ten months before Mardi Gras.

“He will be one of 73 international artists included in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp opening November 18 in New Orleans. He was awarded a United States Artists Fellowship in 2014.

“Monique Verdin (mylouisianalove.com) is a storyteller, photographer, filmmaker and daughter of Southeast Louisiana’s Houma Nation. ... Verdin’s work depicts the Houma Nation’s increasingly precarious relationship with the wetlands of southeastern Louisiana as tides rise and lands and ways of life disappear. It demonstrates the complex interconnectedness between environment, economics, culture, and climate. She has intimately documented her Houma relatives, their experiences and traditions at the ends of the bayous, as they endure and adapt to harsh realities in the heart of America’s Mississippi River Delta.

“Verdin will be one of 73 international artists included in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, opening November 18 in New Orleans. Monique is the subject/co-writer/co-producer of the award-winning documentary film, My Louisiana Love (2012)."

Note: Read more about Prospect.4, New Orleans' citywide art triennial, in our online calendar.