Also tapping this energy is the other clear highlight of “Yesterday We Said Tomorrow” for me: the conjoined display, in an abandoned library annex of the Ogden Museum, of works by Glenn Ligon and Jennie C. Jones.
Around the edge of the space, Ligon has studded a series of his signature black-painted neons. Each one memorializes a date when a monument to the Confederacy was taken down in New Orleans, a cluster in 2017 and a cluster in 2020. The chapel-like architecture and the neons’ placement on the ceiling panels above the central annex make them read like beats in an unfolding devotional narrative. You are supposed to get a sense, looking at the dates, that history has happened. But Ligon’s conceptual austerity also feels deliberately removed from celebration.
The accompanying work of Jones, a multifaceted and accomplished experimental artist who’s been getting long-deserved attention, alternates two sound compositions in the chapel-like space, one a blending of multiple gospel choirs singing “A City Called Heaven,” a majestic Civil Rights anthem associated with activist Mahalia Jackson; the other a Jones composition incorporating droning sounds of energetic healing practices, distended bells, and samples of Black composer Alvin Singleton’s experimental music, building in layers and never quite resolving, in a beautiful way.
Taken all together, the Ogden’s architecture, Ligon’s date markers, and Jones’s music create an effect akin to visiting a contemporary shrine, a gathering point for introspection on history and the present.
“Yesterday We Said Tomorrow” feels very much of a piece with the moment that has made the New York Times’s “1619 Project” a contemporary sensation among liberal audiences. Back in 2007, when it was founded, the stated goal of Prospect New Orleans was to contribute to economic revitalization in the tourism-dependent city following Hurricane Katrina: “Since people in the art world tend to be flush, when they show up, they like to live it up,” Cameron explained at the time. Arriving after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the stated goal of Prospect 5 is “to examine our nation’s violent history and its current injustices through art,” Keith writes in the catalogue.
I wonder how much these two goals have merged, as meditating on privilege becomes a dominant form of elevated cultural consumption for the “flush” cultural tourism audience. And I wonder what that merger means, and how it shapes how I might think about the pressures on this show.
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Read full review and watch video at news.artnet.com.
