Stop Saying “Creative”: Art at the Ford Plant in Arabi
Until Prospect.6, the last and final iteration of the New Orleans triennial, most art viewers had never been to the Ford Assembly Plant in Arabi. It was a stunning venue, hosting mostly large sculptural installations by 12 artists. I was hopeful when I heard that the Ford Plant would again host an art exhibition. Then, on Instagram, I saw an obviously AI-generated flyer with the heading “Creative Industries Assembly,” a date and time, and “Development Plan Release.” Below that, it read “Art Exhibition / Marketplace.” I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at.
From the parking lot in Arabi, a single door opens to a small vestibule furnished with a sign-in desk, and three 6-foot tall vinyl, corporate-looking banners advertising The Ford Plant, Crevasse (a project by the non-profit Creative Alliance of New Orleans [CANO]), and Film Louisiana. I saw no information about the exhibition and wasn’t sure if two framed photographs on the wall were part of it or just decor. In the stairwell, I liked a small landscape painting, but there was no label or attribution. Details like this communicate the seriousness—or lack of seriousness—of an exhibition. (The painting is by Sabrina Evans Schmidt.)
The stairs lead to a large space where rows of folding chairs are set up, looking ready for a meeting, or possibly an “assembly” as alluded to in the flyer. I recognized the large wheel positioned behind the presentation area as a component of Jeannette Ehlers’ Prospect.6 installation Hoist and the Unseen: Journeys Through Tempests in Times of Hunger. I was a little uncomfortable seeing the sculpture repurposed as a space divider. Artworks are distributed throughout the second floor in seven spaces named by the director-organizer, Jeanne Nathan. “The Light Room” and “The Future Perfect Room” struck me as heavy-handed and a bit corny for galleries showing contemporary art.
I could not find, anywhere in the space, a comprehensive list of participating artists—there are reportedly more than 80 of them. For comparison, 12 artists exhibited on both floors during Prospect.6. The volume and selection of work resulted in visual (and conceptual) chaos that devalued much of the art. In addition to artworks, there were books, magazines, and architectural models. At some point I began to notice the scarcity of the word “art” in the promotional materials I found online. In one room, there were four more vinyl banners. One of them read:
- Our Vision
An Assembly Place For Creative Minds - Our Values
#1 To Assemble
#2 To Incubate
#3 To Gather Community
#4 To Restore History
So much. So vague. So corporate.
I spoke to Nathan who is the Director of CANO, the non-profit under which Creative Industries Assembly (CIA) exists. She referred to CIA as both a “project” and an “initiative.” The Ford Plant is owned by Sidney Torres III (the father not the son) who is, according to Nathan, “an arts-oriented person.” Torres agreed to let her use the Ford Plant as a space for CIA while he and his partners were “developing it long term.” She confirmed that the exhibition didn’t have a title or theme and explained that she “put together a team” and “brought them in as curators and organizers for the seven spaces.” She said, “It was more of a team effort than one person’s vision.”
Nathan said that CIA includes “all creative industries in the region.” That’s a lot of industries. The graphic at the top of the CIA development plan lists over 30 “creative” jobs including copywriters, publicists, producers, and web developers. Not including “curators” on that list was probably a harmless oversight, but it was a serious error not to engage one in the project’s inaugural show. I think a “Major Exhibition” should have a major curator. Or even a minor curator to choose a theme, select artists and works, and organize the space for a meaningful viewing experience. Some artists were given a co-curatorial role (Nathan herself selected some artists), but the lack of cohesion and curatorial vision shows. Can you imagine listening to a symphony without a conductor? Or with several?
Still, there are outstanding works on view. Caitlin Ezell Waugh’s sculptures of glass interacting with metal, brick, and wood resonate with the very materials of the building’s construction. I thought about the duration and transformation of these materials in contrast to the human body, whose lifespan is shockingly brief in comparison.
Soil, an installation by Shana M. griffin, occupies a small, rustic, walk-in space of its own. Floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves hold large glass jars filled with soil and are labeled with the names of plantations. I was floored by the sheer number of them. It’s a quiet, moving artwork that avoids the pitfall of an overly didactic presentation, which can obstruct the experience of empathy rather than trigger it. A pale root and green sprout breaking the surface of the dirt in one of the jars took my breath away.
Cole Wiley’s piece Yesterday’s Shadows—made from a disassembled LCD screen framed in pine, a laptop, and a camera—also articulates a haunting notion of time. The screen is set up facing the north windows. Viewers see through the screen (this has to do with the liquid crystals inside) and at the same time see a time-lapse sequence of photographs showing light passing through that very space. The camera, installed facing the windows, is programmed to take a picture every 10 minutes from sunrise to sundown. The screen plays the sequence of images it has captured over the days and weeks of the show. The longer the piece is installed, the more quickly the images change, always compressed into a 10-minute loop. The photographed light glides over the present light like a haunting. I thought about the people who once moved through that space—upstairs with its administrative offices and below on the factory floor, where hundreds of workers assembled cars.
These artworks were made by artists, not “creatives.” The corporate notion of “creativity” neuters the mysterious and inextinguishable urge to make art, to express our intrinsic individuality and freedom and address the messy, human experience with passion, courage, rage, and longing. The very name of this “initiative” bothers me. The term “creative” has been operationalized to help companies appear invested in humans. It has diminished and used artists in service of capitalism. We expect non-profits to be opposed to corporate behavior, but many mimic it instead. Maybe Creative Industries Assembly will meet some needs of some artists, but they are not above asking something in return. Beyond “volunteering” their time, artists are “encouraged to make a donation” to CANO if they sell work in Arabi.
The Ford Auto Plant holds astonishing potential to show artists’ work in the most elevating light—literally and figuratively. This could be a dream scenario for visual artists. But the New Orleans artscape is littered with broken dream scenarios and organizations that fail to meet the needs of artists in any enduring way. Creative Industry Assembly’s GiveNOLA Day Instagram post claims, “Art doesn’t exist in isolation—it exists because people choose to support it.” Wrong. An arts organization exists because people—donors and artists—choose to support it. Art has existed for 50,000 years and it will continue to exist with or without “projects,” “initiatives,” or “major exhibitions.”
Top Photo: H. Cole Wiley, Yesterday’s Shadows (2026)
