The New Orleans arts scene has become one of the most vital and innovative in the nation. It is here that monthly art openings became public celebrations attracting thousands, a pattern now repeated in dozens of urban centers around the country.

New Orleans is the second city in the country after New York City where the arts have driven a major neighborhood revival. The Contemporary Arts Center opened in 1975 in an empty warehouse surrounded by skid row, and other empty warehouses. Now the CAC is surrounded by newly converted warehouses filled with almost 10,000 residents of all ages, with hotels, restaurants, shops and three other major museums, with one on the way.

New Orleans has also been recognized as an arts center where unique art styles and trends have developed, reflecting the special ingredients that go into the art scene here. Sometimes called “swamp art”, the art here reflects the funky, diverse, authentic culture that reigns in the streets and neighborhoods of the city as well as throughout the surrounding countryside.

With over 100 galleries, serious buyers as well as the curious can find something of interest in New Orleans galleries. Whether it is the Gauguin like bird filled jungles of Jacqueline Bishop’s landscapes, or the blue dogs of George Rodrigue, the funky people scapes of Douglas Bourgeoisie filled with rhythm and blues celebrities in their kitchens or nearby clubs, the flashy dancers constructed from false nails by Sally Heller, or the lush impressionist South Louisiana landscapes of Elmore Morgan, new and experienced art buyers alike can find work to fit their lifestyles or simply to enrich their imaginations.

The Contemporary Art Center, (CAC) at 900 Camp Street, set the pace in the mid 70s by presenting large-scale shows of work by living artists of the region, celebrated with over-the-top parties that attracted strikingly diverse crowds of social, business, café, artiste, student and neighborhood crowds.

Now the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has opened across from the CAC with an elegant new building filled with 5 floors of both historic and contemporary art from the South. The Ogden, which began with the notable collection of works by Roger Ogden, provides a rich context for viewing and understanding art made of and about the south.

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) in City Park has exceptional collections of the decorative arts including one of the world’s best collections of Faberge. It is also known for its African, Asian, and Latin American Art. It has also collected the works of contemporary artists from the region and the country, especially in its wonderful new Walda and Sydney Besthoff Sculpture Garden, the only one in the country that can claim to have a bayou running through it.

One of the great advantages of checking out the arts in New Orleans is that visitors can get to most of the galleries and museums via the city’s fabled streetcars. The streetcars run along the river, on St. Charles Avenue, a street that runs right through the arts district, and now, with a newly revived line just opened in spring of 2004, along Canal Street to City Park, dropping passengers about a block from NOMA. From NOMA the Esplanade bus takes visitors close to the riverfront streetcar line, the French Quarter, and Frenchman Street area where numerous music clubs, cafes and restaurant await visitors ready to kick back a little.

A shuttle bus that allows unlimited boarding and de-boarding now travels the length of Magazine Street, the other major arts neighborhood of the city. With its five miles of galleries, shops and restaurants, visitors can check in on the exciting art shows at the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University, or shows at the Academy of Fine Arts, then continue on to some of the best shopping and eating in the country.

Downriver from the French Quarter, another arts based district is in the making. The Marigny and By-Water areas, running along the river, now include many art galleries, antiques stores and a monthly outdoor art market. Many performing and visual artists live in these Caribbean style neighborhoods in brightly painted Creole Cottages. Studio Inferno, a glassmaking studio and shop in an old warehouse is the arts anchor of the area, and Royal Street, is the center of the antiques area.

Central City, just off the city’s elegant and historic St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans, is an area that has suffered through a long drought now being quenched by, again, the arts. The Ashe Cultural Center, Barrister’s Gallery and The Neighborhood Gallery, have done more to bring back this once bustling shopping district with monthly visual and performing arts presentations than any economic development program. Café Reconcile, across from Barrister’s Gallery, where youth are offered an opportunity to learn the culinary trades, has become a magnet for the professional crowd, and drawn by the excellent and well-priced home-style food.

Below Canal Street, and just beyond the French Quarter the Treme, Bayou St John and 7^th ward neighborhoods are just beginning to grow a newer cultural landscape to match the rich cultural heritage of the area. From plantation homes on the Bayou near City Park and NOMA, visitors can follow the Esplanade Ridge that runs through the middle of these neighborhoods, to find some of the city’s best restaurants and food shopping at the now historic home of the Whole Foods chain of natural foods supermarkets on Esplanade Avenue.

Continuing back toward the river, visitors can travel down the city’s oldest street, Bayou Road, which was the old portage for Native Americans traveling from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Pontchartrain, down Bayou St. John, then along Bayou Road to the river. Bayou Road, between Broad and Tonti is becoming a mecca for African centered shopping and eating.

The arts and the neighborhoods of New Orleans have a special relationship, or language…of renewal, of mutual sustenance, of renewed sustainability. In the interplay between the cultural legacy and future of the city, is a rich world for visitors and residents alike to enjoy and learn about. Visit www.neworleanscvb.com/cultural to find a self-guided tour for the arts in New Orleans neighborhoods.