The annual summer gallery-opening party is one of the biggest events of summer in New Orleans. Although linen seems like a good choice for a breezy summer evening, this year the light dress conjures images of tropical spots farther south. The Caribbean and Latin America inspire an evening of Latin beats and colorful décor in the Warehouse District.

White Linen paints a festive portrait of the downtown contemporary art gallery scene. They’ve taken a slow summer night and turned it into one of the city’s more fun art parties. With the art season not formally open, gallery owners have wide latitude to stage more fun and exotic shows. Meanwhile, the entertainment in the street keeps the party going.

White Linen’s tropical vibes will come from music stages set up along Julia Street from 6-9 pm. Among the performers are Ricardo Crespo’s Brazilian jazz trio and the Executive Steel Band playing Caribbean sounds. After the galleries close at 9 pm, the party moves to the Contemporary Arts Center (900 Camp St.), which will feature Honduran-born Fredy Omar Con Su Banda.

Roughly 20 galleries, mostly clustered along Julia, Magazine and Camp streets, will feature new shows. As the main artery of the gallery district, Julia Street will have its own tents, artist demonstrations, bar and food stations, live music and more. Other attractions open as well, including the Louisiana Children’s Museum. The Contemporary Arts Center (900 Camp St.) opens a new show and hosts the after party with live music and a cash bar from 9 pm to midnight. They’ll even offer Latin dance lessons until 10 pm.

The art gallery scene in New Orleans used to be an exclusively French Quarter, Royal Street affair. The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) formed in 1976 to focus on younger, emerging artists. Since art galleries, lofts, restaurants and lawyers offices reclaimed the rest of the Warehouse District following the 1984 World Fair, which was centered on Julia Street at the Riverfront, the art scene developed a new dimension. Focusing more on living artists and contemporary art, the new galleries and CAC brought new energy to the art scene and transformed New Orleans into more of a regional art center.

The contemporary art scene continues to expand its vision. Last year, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art opened in the district, across from the CAC. The Smithsonian-affiliated institution has the largest collection of Southern art on public display. Based on the collection of New Orleans developer and philanthropist Roger Ogden, it has art in many mediums from the 17th century to the present. Currently under construction just blocks away, Louisiana Artworks will open next year. The project is a combined studio and gallery space, being developed under the management of the Louisiana Arts Council. With so much going on in the arts, White Linen has much to celebrate and an ever wider horizon to view.

“With the opening of the Ogden Museum, we have a place to study the distinct flavor and soul of Southern works and trace its legacy, exploring the visual influence of the South on American culture,” says Director Richard Gruber.

Backed up to Lee Circle, Ogden is anchoring a growing museum district, which already includes the Contemporary Arts Center and the National D-Day Musuem. The Ogden is the first Louisiana museum to be affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.Ogden will open in three phases. The Stephen Goldring Hall, the complex’s central building, opens August 23rd with a survey of different periods, regions and mediums. Representative pieces include Southern landscapes, bohemian New Orleans, self-taught artists, modernism in the South, contemporary movements from Florida and Texas reflecting the changing South, photography spanning a century, and Southern crafts in wood, clay, metal and glass. Artists include E.J. Bellocq, Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Christenberry, Walker Evans, Clementine Hunter and Eudora Welty. The Patrick F. Taylor Library and Clementine Hunter Wing will open in 2004.

The Ogden Museum was created out of the personal collection of local philanthropist Roger Ogden. He started to develop the idea of a museum in partnership with the University of New Orleans in 1994. As the project shaped up, shows drawn from the Ogden collection were mounted. In 1999, a preview gallery opened in the district while construction was completed on the permanent 67,000 square foot space. The collections include more than 2,750 pieces from Washington D.C. and the 15 Southern states, spanning the 18th through 21st centuries.

The mission of the museum is to collect, present and examine the finest in Southern art. Shows will address critical themes in Southern art and how they reflect the region’s history and culture. Education initiatives will be a major component of the Ogden’s mission.

As jazz went from a scandalous music played in New Orleans dance halls to national popular music to a unique American art form, it attracted artists in all mediums. Particularly through photography, the impressions of a particular moment on stage have been captured, frozen and immortalized. During Jazz Fest, many of these artists present their work at the Fair Grounds and around town.

John Stinson Gallery (900 South Peters St., 504-566-1944)
At his new gallery in the Warehouse District, John Stinson presents a special dual show of the photography of Louisiana natives Skip Bolen and Steven Forster. Bolen works in black and white and his portion of the show comes primarily from shooting at the Jazz Fest. Forster works in color in large formats. He’ll present some of his monumental four by six foot prints of New Orleans musicians.

Herman Leonard (www.hermanleonard.com)
One of the most famous of jazz photographers,Leonard first started photographing jazz musicians in New York in the 1940s. He put the work aside to do fashion photography in Europe but in the ’60s he found his old negatives and returned to jazz. His work is widely collected by the Smithsonian Institution. The second largest collection is on the walls of the restaurant Maximo’s Italian Grill (1117 Decatur St.). Leonard lives in New Orleans and will be out shooting at the Jazz Fest as he focuses on New Orleans jazz talents.

Michael P. Smith (www.culturalicons.com)
A prolific photographer, Michael Smith has devoted his career to capturing New Orleans, particularly jazz, the all around revival of New Orleans music beginning in the ’70s, and the Mardi Gras Indians. He’s followed New Orleans music from the most colorful corner bars to the stages of Jazz Fest. He’ll be out shooting on the grounds and has a tent near the Fais Do Do stage featuring his works for sale. The prints and catalogues include every Jazz Fest and just about every local and major visiting artist.

Frenchy Gallery (319 Royal St., 504-561-5885)
Frenchy has carved out a local niche as a performance painter. He literally captures artists as they play, rendering complete works in the course of a musical set. He’s a regular at the Fest and has also gained a reputation for painting sporting figures and events as well. He was seen regularly on national television during New Orleans Saints home games as he painted from the sidelines. Musicians are his primary focus.

Lionel Milton Gallery (1818 Magazine St., 504-522-6966)
New Orleans native Lionel Milton paints canvasses and murals in an eye-catching, representational style with heavy grafitti and cartoon influences. His mural-covered gallery is unmistakable in the Lower Garden District, and the gallery often hosts happy hour events, in line with his relaxed vibe and approach. Jazz, Mardi Gras and street scenes are some of his most common subjects.

Lord Jim (618 Royal St., 504-524-0914)
Miniature glass and ceramic pieces are the focus of Lord Jim. The shop offers more than 5,000 unique Limoges porcelain boxes. Limoges porcelain is renowned because of the mineral-rich clay used to make it. Pieces can be fired at higher temperatures and thus are stronger and more durable. Most of Lord Jim’s pieces are just big enough to fill the palm of the hand. Each is individually painted and the designs range from whimsical animals to white alligators to cartoon characters to France’s best champagne bottles. The shop also offers glass paperweights by top creators like Caithness, Baccarat and Saint Louis. Lord Jim also has a selection of carved ivory from Japan and East Asia.

Royal Cameo Glass (322 Royal St., 522-7840)
Cameo glass involves techniques to carve multiple layers of glass, which give a piece depth and color. This is difficult because heating and cooling multiple layers is complicated science. Royal Cameo carries pieces by one of the most renowned names in cameo glass, Kelsey Murphy. The West Virginia artist has managed to sculpt and color as many as 12 layers. Other top cameo glass artists are represented by the gallery as well. Royal Cameo also carries another rare type of glasswork in which paints mixed with glass dust are fused onto a glass piece. Danish artist Ulla Darni presents amazingly rich colored pieces, including beautiful lampshade and chandelier domes.

Studio Inferno (3000 Royal St., 888-875-5001)
New Orleans is home to many talented glass blowers. Mitchell Gaudet is one of the more accomplished artists and his work is sold throughout the United States and Europe. He created Studio Inferno in the Bywater section of New Orleans in 1991. The studio has a shop but is also a workspace. Visitors are welcome to watch the artists at work. Their series include colorful vases and functional pieces as well as cast glass objects like fleur de lys. The Torso Cups combine Martini chic with classical sculpted human torsos as stems.

Jean Bragg Antiques and Gallery (3901 Magazine St., 895-7375)
Jean Bragg’s gallery carries a large selection of Newcomb pottery, one of the top art potteries. It is named for Newcomb College, the sister school to Tulane University. The art program was started in the 1880s to train women for self-supporting endeavors. Out of that came the pottery and other Newcomb crafts. The pottery was striking for its cobalt blue and jade green colors but later different finishes and naturalist themes characterized Newcomb work. A wide variety of pieces were made, from plates and bowls to vases, candlesticks and lamp bases. Bragg also carries the work of George E. Ohr. He was trained by one of the Newcomb potters but came up with his own distinctive free-form elements.

While the connection might puzzle some, there is a tie between the invasion of Normandy and the beaches of Lake Pontchartrain. It is also the basis for historian Stephen Ambrose’s efforts to create the museum here in New Orleans. As President Dwight Eisenhower’s biographer, Ambrose learned about a New Orleanian named Andrew Jackson Higgins. Eisenhower had asked if Ambrose, then at the University of New Orleans, knew Higgins. Ambrose had never met him. Then Eisenhower explained that Higgins had enabled the Allies to win the war.

Higgins was a ship builder, but only after a long series of less successful ventures in his native Nebraska and Mobile, AL. It was an industry he took up after trying to make a living logging timber in the swamps. The swamps were difficult to work until Higgins designed a flat-bottomed boat that could maneuver up on the banks and then off again under their own power. He called them Eureka boats. Higgins used them for logging but also started selling them to other interests, including the Coast Guard, oil companies and smugglers.

As World War II neared, the Marine Corps was looking for a troop landing boat. In sea trials, the Higgins boat outclassed the competition. Production went into high gear at his New Orleans factories. More than 30,000 people worked at his plants, and it was one of the first major local employers to open up to a diverse workforce, including Rosie the Riveter and African Americans. Because he kept so many employed during the tail end of the Depression, even when he didn’t have the money to do so, Higgins was loved and admired throughout the city. Eventually, Higgins’ factories supplied more than 12,000 landing crafts and a total of more than 20,000 boats to the military.

The boats were crucial to the war effort. Landing troops on beaches was essentially a new type of warfare. Previously, invasions focused on harbors because that made it easier for ships to land troops and equipment once they got a foothold. But harbors are easy to defend and that meant heavy casualties. In World War II, the United States started assaulting beaches with the Higgins crafts. They were successful in North Africa, crucial at Normandy and effective in the South Pacific.

Ambrose spent much of his later career writing about the war and interviewing thousands of veterans. As they gave him their artifacts, like medals, patches and helmets, his office filled up. And he got the idea to bring together the war history and the personal accounts of the war. Though it was a long time in the making, the project heated up and fundraising was propelled by movies like Saving Private Ryan and its Hollywood heavyweights, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Both contributed generously to the project. Focusing on the Higgins boats, the new beach warfare and all of the veterans who landed via the boats, Ambrose found widespread support for the museum. It opened in June of 2000 with the fanfare of visiting heads of state and the largest military parade since the end of the war. It was also one of the largest meetings of World War II veterans, who were honored again in the victory parade.

The state of the art museum tells the story of the war both in overview and with video and audio installations with stories from veterans. Inside the opening Louisiana Pavilion, the museum has vintage military vehicles, including airplanes and the last Higgins boat. In preparation for opening the museum, a crew of military veterans, former Higgins factory workers, historians and volunteers built the boat from the original plans to the original specifications. They even held a test trial on Lake Pontchartrain where the military used to train personnel to steer the boats. Local veterans are also on hand everyday to talk about the boats and their experiences in the war.

The 60th anniversary celebration is slated for June 5-6. Events include a living history encampment in front of the museum, firepower demonstrations, tactical briefings at appropriate times on how the actual Normandy invasion progressed, a reception Saturday night, a sunrise service early Sunday morning, plus all sorts of special exhibits and walk throughs.