The Next Gen Board Leader: Christopher J. Alfieri
Our funding strategy for sustainability involves investing in our own community.
5 QUESTIONS WITH Christopher J. Alfieri
President & Board Chairman and General Counsel of Prospect New Orleans; Partner, Christovich & Kearney, LLP
New Orleans, LA
Chris is a founding member, President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Prospect New Orleans (PNO). He was appointed Chairman in 2018. Since 2008, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Prospect New Orleans has presented the work of more than three hundred Artists from around the globe, the vast majority underrepresented and identifying as BIPOC. Prospect is the longest-running exhibition of its kind in the United States. Prospect Artists are selected by some of America’s most talented curators, Dan Cameron (P.1 & P.2), Franklin Sirmans (P.3), Trevor Schoonmaker (P.4) and now, Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi (P.5). For over a decade, Prospect has invited Artists to be inspired by New Orleans and to reflect the intricate histories of this tricentennial City in their work.
Chris is a Partner in the New Orleans law firm of Christovich & Kearney, LLP. He is specialized in art law and serves as PNO’s general counsel. In his art law practice, Chris counsels a variety of clients ranging from individual artists, visual art organizations and institutions (museums, biennials/triennials, art fairs and non-profit cultural entities), collectors, dealers, auction houses, private brokers and galleries in Louisiana and elsewhere in the US and abroad. Chris handles a wide array of matters involving contracts, art commerce, artist moral rights, copyright, resale rights and restitution & repatriation.
Chris came to the firm out of law school as an associate in 1999 and became a partner in the firm in 2007. In addition to his art law practice, Chris handles a broad range of defense commercial and civil litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout Louisiana in which he represents corporate and individual clients based in the US and abroad. Chris is a Past President of the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, the largest FBA chapter in the U.S., established in 1937. He is also a Lifetime Fellow of the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association; there are only 269 Fellows of the Foundation throughout the U.S. The Fellows program recognizes individuals who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to and leadership within both the FBA and the legal community.
About P.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, curated by Artistic Directors Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi, Prospect.5 is the fifth iteration of Prospect New Orleans. This citywide contemporary art triennial will feature more than fifty artists in over fifteen venues throughout New Orleans and will include newly commissioned works alongside the work of historically significant artists. P.5 will investigate how history informs the present––particularly in relation to New Orleans, a uniquely American city that embodies so many urgent issues of today, but which remains deeply invested in and subject to its recent and historical past. Taking the city as a mandate, the P.5 exhibition examines history as both document and fiction, exploring the idea that our moment feels both unprecedented and familiar.
1. Per the Giving USA 2021 report, 2020 charitable giving in the United States broke records. However, while seven of the nine charitable sectors saw growth, giving to the cultural sector declined ~7.5%. As the board chair of a major arts organization, how do you consider this as you map out the future of the organization?
I try to listen more than I speak and approach leadership with some humility. We live in an age where identity and accountability matter more than ever. Given the existential crises facing all of us today, but felt especially by young people – climate change, economic disparity, systemic violence and institutional racism – it’s not surprising younger generations want their giving to have meaning and social impact. Cultural institutions face tough questions about what they stand for, who they benefit and how they claim to be relevant now. I believe artists will show us what matters if we just get out of their way. Truthfully, the very character, mission and purpose of Prospect has been shaped over a decade by very talented curators inviting gifted artists to produce work immersed in the DNA of New Orleans. We have no brick and mortar; our capital is our valued relationships with our artists and curators.
From a fundraising standpoint, Prospect’s biggest challenge is staying visible and engaged with our community in the years between triennial exhibitions. We generally do this by partnering with local organizations and leveraging our relationships with major artists and galleries outside New Orleans to have impact locally. Creating relevant and meaningful programming and fostering engagement throughout the cycle requires dedicated funding that does not thin resources required to produce the exhibition. Some funders see it as an “either/or”: funding programming versus underwriting exhibition production and artist projects. We need both. It’s surprisingly difficult for us to convince some funders of the importance of programming during the interim years if they believe our only purpose is to produce the triennial exhibition in year three. It becomes a chicken and egg problem. Without the resources to retain programming and public engagement staff in between exhibitions, we are constrained to reduce our footprint and concentrate primarily on fundraising in the non-exhibition years. This is a loss for our local arts community who see Prospect as a conduit for bringing our deep bench of curators, artists and art professionals from around the world to engage with, support and grow the creative work of our local arts community. It also limits the opportunities for Prospect artists and curators to enrich their own work by connecting with their local counterparts. We know that both groups benefit immeasurably from this engagement, and we believe Prospect is uniquely positioned to foster these relationships.
Prospect is a place-based organization that operates within an incredibly vibrant visual art community. In January, as part of our P.5 celebrations, Prospect will honor the contributions of five New Orleans independent artist collectives, The Front, Good Children, Level Artist Collective, Antenna Gallery and Staple Goods. These collectives are self-governing groups of local, early-career artists working in the St. Claude arts district of the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. They consistently produce and show their work monthly and promote the work of other artists in the community. Several of these artists have been selected for the Prospect triennial, among them Skylar Fein (P.1), Dan Charbonnet (P.2), Sophie T. Lvoff (P.3), Generic Art Solutions - Tony Campbell and Matt Vis (P.5 Satellite).
Our funding strategy for Prospect’s sustainability and interim-year engagement involves investing in our own community and by doing so, to create opportunities for other similarly situated organizations. In January we will introduce the William A. Fagaly Memorial Fund for Social Impact. This purpose-driven fund was seeded through the generosity of one of Prospect’s founding board members, Bill Fagaly. Bill passed away unexpectedly in May of this year and endowed PNO with the proceeds from the sale of his significant art collection. Bill was a scholar and curator and worked for 50 years in various positions at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Among his major accomplishments was the understanding, expansion and refining of the museum’s African art collection. What began with fewer than 10 pieces when he came to the museum in 1966 grew to around 600 by the time Bill retired in 2016; this initiative led to deeper appreciation of the history of New Orleans, a city with a majority Black population. Bill also contributed substantially to the understanding of Southern outsider art, bringing attention to important outsider artists like David Butler and Sister Gertrude Morgan.
Bill understood the importance of Prospect to New Orleans. From the very beginning, Bill championed the work of artists whose work responds to the intricate histories of New Orleans, addressing issues ranging from environmental justice to social and labor inequality, and confronting the most pressing political issues of our time. The William A. Fagaly Memorial Fund for Social Impact will be dedicated to fulfilling Prospect’s commitment to fostering a flourishing local ecosystem of underrepresented and BIPOC artists and cultural organizations through collaboration, because doing so enhances our work.
2. What initially attracted you to dedicate your time and philanthropy to the arts and to the professional work you do with artists, collectors, dealers, arts organizations, and non-profit corporations?
I met Dan Cameron, the founding Artistic Director of Prospect, in New Orleans in 2006 following Hurricane Katrina. We were introduced by our mutual friend Joe Melillo, at that time the Executive Producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I remember Joe telling me “I’d like you to meet my friend Dan Cameron. You both share a deep love for New Orleans and its artists.” Joe was right. Dan asked a simple question: “What could the role of artists be in rebuilding New Orleans.” Dan had hatched an ambitious plan with others in the New Orleans art community, among them gallerist Arthur Roger and curator/scholar Bill Fagaly, to harness the art world to come to the rescue of New Orleans still reeling from environmental destruction.
Fifteen years ago, I think Dan saw me as a young, civic-minded lawyer and budding collector with a lot of energy and passion for New Orleans, and he asked me to serve on the board of directors of Prospect. I had never served on a board before, but at the time I had a basic understanding of fiduciary duty, and I accepted the challenge. Over time I have embraced the responsibility, shared with my fellow trustees, to ensure the future sustainability of Prospect and to inspire trust and confidence in our leadership. New Orleans inspires like no other city in the world.
Producing Prospect is not easy, but I wouldn’t trade the last 15 years for anything in the world. Against the odds, Prospect has opened exhibitions in times of environmental disaster, economic crisis and political upheaval, maintaining a commitment to promote the voices of Artists when and where they are needed most. I think back on the work of P.1 Artists Mark Bradford (Mithra), Wangechi Mutu (Mrs. Sarah’s House) and Nari Ward (Diamond Gym), whose iconic works brought international attention to our beleaguered New Orleans and healing to Lower Ninth Ward communities “that care forgot,” broken by environmental devastation. This is how Artists lead. Naima and Diana’s eloquently themed P.5 exhibition, Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, reprises these Prospect alumni artists and invites us to consider how long we will continue to defer meaningful change.
Acting as pro bono legal counsel for Prospect over the last 15 years has introduced me to a wide array of array of legal issues involving individual artists, visual art organizations and institutions (museums, biennials/triennials, art fairs and non-profit cultural entities), collectors, dealers, auction houses, private brokers and galleries in Louisiana and elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. Protecting artists’ interests and moral rights in law has been one of the greatest rewards of my legal career. I owe a lot to Prospect New Orleans.
3. Next generation philanthropists care deeply about the impact their giving has on their communities and greater society. As a next gen leader, how might we best demystify the arts to rising cohorts, showing the link between the arts and social impact?
Prospect is a place-based organization with deep roots in the arts community of New Orleans. New Orleans is a bellwether. Our city illustrates in real time some of the most pressing issues the world is grappling with today. PNO remains relevant because of our deep partnerships with visionary curators and artists.
Prospect.5 unfolds in its own uncertain times. In the years leading up to the opening of P.5 we witnessed the Capitol of the United States overrun by extremists and the Artistic Directors, based in Los Angeles County, saw it surpass one million Covid-19 cases, risking their lives and the lives of the P.5 artists who reside there. Naima and Diana didn’t know of these events when they announced their P.5 Artist list and conceptual framework in New York in early March 2020, nor did they know George Floyd would lose his life to police violence and white supremacy months later, further igniting the Black Lives Matter Movement. Their title Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, was prescient and their thoughtful collaboration has resulted in a powerful exhibition for New Orleans and the world. The work of Kevin Beasley, E.J. Hill and Malcolm Peacock among others in this exhibition immediately comes to mind as examples of artists whose work directly impacts the communities in which (and about which) it was created.
It’s about championing artists whose work responds to the intricate histories of New Orleans, addressing issues ranging from environmental justice to social and labor inequality and confronting the most pressing political issues of our time.
4. Opening this month, P.5 will be “taking the city as a mandate, examin[ing] history as both document and fiction, exploring the idea that our moment feels both unprecedented and familiar.” How can arts entities such as Prospect most effectively work within their local communities to examine solutions to our most urgent challenges?
There are so many artist projects that over the course of Prospect’s history that embed in local communities and draw attention to their challenges. One that immediately comes to mind is Wangechi Mutu’s P.1 project, Ms. Sarah’s House. From the artist’s own project statement:
Before Hurricane Katrina and the levy breach, Sarah Lastie had lived in the Lower 9th ward since 1972 . . . The young couple, Sarah Lastie and her musician husband, the late Walter David Lastie (from the legendary New Orleans Lastie jazz family, aka Popee) bought their house from the Doctor who owned it at the time. The couple went on to have two daughters and created a family and community in the lower 9th ward. Sadly, Mr. Lastie died in December 1980. I became attracted to Ms. Sarah’s space when I went on a site visit to New Orleans . . . There at the crossroads of Caffin Street and Chartres Street is an art gallery named L9 Center for the Arts. I found the family of artists, who own and operate the L9 Center for the Arts, Chandra McCormick, her husband Keith Calhoun and their nephew Isaiah, incredibly warm and inviting . . . While at the meeting, I got up several times to look out the door, and each time I noticed the land diagonally across from them. The vacant lot intrigued me. I remember the beautiful vacant plot with perfectly cut grass and an unfinished foundation. I asked them about the space, and they mentioned it belonged to a woman named Ms. Sarah who still owned the land. Ms. Sarah used some of her savings to begin the rebuilding of her house . . . She had worked for the last two and a half years struggling with the City and State bureaucracy in her efforts to return to New Orleans. She began rebuilding her house that the City had demolished, due to damage by Hurricane Katrina, and the flood that followed from the levy breach. Needless to say, Ms. Sarah ran into one brick wall after another, including being swindled by non-licensed contractors who built a foundation that would not pass building codes . . . Ms. Sarah's House is a site sensitive work that is being built as a tribute and a place of pilgrimage for Prospect 1 visitors but especially for the people of the Lower 9th ward who were struck twice in one week; first by the storm and secondly by the blow from the State of Louisiana’s catastrophic negligence. Ms. Sarah’s House is made of light. This 'light-drawing' will create a kind of ghost building at night...a mirage of sorts, which represents an attempt to describe Ms. Sarah’s and others' dream of returning home. I plan to use the footprint of the house that was never built, as a pedestal. The building will consist of a frame that resembles a traditional New Orleans railroad house where the viewer can visit, enter and walk throughout the space. In addition, I am producing a print titled 'Homeward Bound' that will be sold and used to raise funds for Ms. Sarah's House project. All proceeds will assist Ms. Sarah in rebuilding/restoring her family home.
This is how artists lead.
5. Hurricane Ida shifted the opening of P.5, which had already been postponed due to the pandemic. What advice do you have for other trustees and cultural organization leaders on how to best navigate these most unpredictable times?
Stay as lean and nimble as you can, and invest in building your team. Our ability to pivot during this pandemic is thanks to the creative, confident leadership of Prospect’s Executive Director, Nick Stillman, who put together an amazing team and then let them run with the ball. Listen to the artists whose voices you promote. Institutional filtration is a real thing. Resist it. Stay open to change and to evolving on issues you think you understand, but may not. Be humble and listen more than you speak. Love it, or leave it. We don’t produce Prospect because it’s easy, we do it because it’s hard. My board understands the importance of Prospect for our City and community, and we’re committed to promoting the voices of Artists when and where they are needed most. Finally, please come see P.5, Yesterday we said tomorrow, curated by Artistic Directors Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi and be inspired by our glorious and improbable New Orleans.
The Path Forward interview series, an initiative of MCW Projects LLC, investigates how cultural and philanthropic leaders are re-envisioning the future of the arts.