New Orleans

The Underground Guide, 4th Edition

Michael Patrick Welch

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780807170427
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

New Orleans: The Underground Guide shows visitors how to experience the Big Easy like a local, looking past staples like beignets and Bourbon Street to reveal a city bursting with contemporary and experimental art, genre-busting DJs, international cuisines, and even kid-friendly activities.This fully updated edition offers an expansive collection of alternative recommendations for exploring the city of Mardi Gras, brass bands, and weekly festivals. Featuring over two hundred new entries on local bands, rappers, restaurants with live music, galleries, and more, this guidebook takes readers on a one-of-a-kind journey through New Orleans, giving advice on everything from what thrift stores and bookshops to visit to what bands to catch in concert and what parades to attend.Lead author Michael Patrick Welch provides a detailed guide of the less traditional, more adventurous side of New Orleans, from bars that hold readings of poetry and erotic literature to costume shops that sell handmade masks, party supplies, and all the parade throws you can carry. Drawing on the wisdom of New Orleans celebrities, journalists, artists, and musicians from throughout the Crescent City, the fourth edition of New Orleans: The Underground Guide is an authentic and reliable resource for where locals listen to music, art hop, shop, eat, drink, and let loose.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN
NEW ORLEANS

10. GALLERIES AND ART MUSEUMS

New Orleans’ visual art scene has long played second fiddle to attractions like music and food, but the same playful, liberated, indulgent attitudes that created the conditions for those local pleasures have also encouraged a vibrant arts community, especially since Katrina.

The city’s art can sometimes be too self-referential, pandering to touristy notions of “outsider art,” but following the international art biennial Prospect.1, which called New Orleans home in 2008, the city’s underground art scene has come out fighting.

ST. CLAUDE ARTS DISTRICT

The many new high-quality, big-personality galleries in Bywater/Marigny call themselves the St. Claude Arts District, and provide a much welcome complement to the already existing Julia Street galleries in the CBD, which are nice, but maybe a li’l too “professional.” Between the two districts, though, New Orleans can now proudly brag on its art scene. The St. Claude Arts District hosts many concurrent show openings on the second Saturday of each month.

ANTENNA

Bywater, 3718 St. Claude Ave., 504-298-3161; antenna.works

Via its 501c3 literary and visual arts umbrella Press Street, Antenna produces an array of risk-taking solo and group exhibitions, special events, educational programming, and artist talks. Press Street also hosts the 24-hour arts education extravaganza Draw-a-Thon (each December); Room 220, a blog dedicated to the literary life of New Orleans; free public film screenings; and the publication of books focusing on the relationship between the visual and literary arts.

ART GARAGE

Marigny, 2231 St. Claude Ave., 504-717-0750; artgarage.events

The old Frenchmen Street Art Market moved up the street when Frenchmen Street became another Bourbon Street. Artisans from all over the city offer paintings, jewelry, and other creations in a living room setting decorated with a telephone booth, an indoor gazebo, and soft strings of Christmas lights. Open on weekend nights, the Art Garage sits between clubs Siberia, Hi-Ho, and AllWays.

BARRISTER’S GALLERY

Bywater, 2331 St. Claude Ave., 504-525-2767/504-710-4506; barristersgallery.com

Barrister’s maintains a permanent collection of strange folk, outsider, and ethnographic art from Africa, Haiti, and Asia. The gallery also brings in a monthly featured contemporary exhibit in keeping with its focus on the eclectic and unorthodox.

BYRDIE’S POTTERY STUDIO

Bywater, 2402 St. Claude Ave., 504-656-6794; byrdiespottery.org

This tea and coffee shop doubles as an official St. Claude Arts District art gallery and as a ceramics studio offering classes, as well as memberships for anyone just needing to use a kiln. A new art show opens on the second Saturday night of each month.

THE FRONT

Bywater, 4100 St. Claude Ave., 504-301-8654; nolafront.org

This talented collective of modern-leaning artists can get wacky, but The Front is the most meticulous high-quality gallery in the SCAD. Open noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Expect installation work, and experimental movies (and beers) in the backyard.

The Front is one of the tighter galleries in the scrappy St. Claude’s Arts District.

Jonathan Traviesa

GALLERY CO-OP AT THE NEW ORLEANS HEALING CENTER

Marigny, 2372 St. Claude Ave., 504-940-1130; neworleanshealingcenter.org

This collective of roughly a dozen artists hosts rotating local and national exhibits in the New Orleans Healing Center, home to Café Istanbul, the new Spotted Cat, and the health food co-op.

GOOD CHILDREN GALLERY

Bywater, 4037 St. Claude Ave., 504-975-1557; goodchildrengallery.com

This laid-back space features high art with personality, and often a sense of humor. The Good Children collective includes the duo Generic Art Solutions (GAS), who continually enact a performance piece called “Art Cops,” where they roam the more highfalutin’ local art world arenas in cop uniforms, handing out tickets for bad art and other offenses. Saturday and Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m., and special nighttime events.

NEW ORLEANS ART CENTER

Bywater, 3330 St. Claude Ave., 707-383-4765; theneworleansartcenter.com

Monthly shows feature art in every medium (with a good deal of jewelry and other crafts thrown in). Live figure-drawing classes on Mondays.

NEW ORLEANS COMMUNITY PRINTSHOP & DARKROOM

Bywater, 1201 Mazant St.; nolacommunityprintshop.org

This print-making collective provides public access to affordable equipment, training, and services. Designed to help independent artists and entrepreneurs grow their business through screen printing, the Community Printshop also provides adult education, youth education, and outreach. And it shows new work by local artists. Open Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 6 to 10 p.m.

STAPLE GOODS

St. Roch, 1340 St. Roch Ave., 504-908-7331

Located in a former corner grocery in the St. Roch neighborhood, Staple Goods is an artists’ collective dedicated to innovative programming of contemporary visual art by its members and invited guests from the United States and abroad. Open weekends noon to 5 p.m.

UNO GALLERY

Lakefront, 2429 St. Claude Ave., 504-948-6939; unostclaudegallery.wordpress.com

An exhibition space dedicated to showing the work of University of New Orleans MFA candidates and faculty as well as exhibitions in conjunction with district and community events. Open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and by appointment.

NOLA MOMENT

Artist and gallery owner Jonathan Ferrara in the Julia St. Arts District.

Jonathan Traviesa

ARTIST JONATHAN FERRARA ON THE JULIA STREET ARTS DISTRICT

Julia Street is the more established local arts district, featuring slick, higher-dollar contemporary work. The street hosts multiple art show debuts on the first Saturday of every month, plus huge events like the White Linen Night art walk (first Saturday of August).

A fan of more contemporary, cutting-edge work, gallery owner Jonathan Ferrara sees the bright side of Julia Street, where he moved his long-running gallery in 2007 (400A Julia St., 504-522-5471; jonathanferraragallery.com). “Julia Street has really turned around in the last ten years,” Ferrara told me in 2009. “When I moved to the Warehouse District in 2000, Julia was a lot of designer-esque stuff. And with my moving here and spicing things up, shaking things up, the market has definitely changed to a more contemporary, less designer, more artistic-driven emphasis, which is a good thing. Before it was boring. Now it’s much more exciting. It’s not as exciting as St. Claude,” he adds. “The edgier stuff is not gonna take place on Julia Street, but the work here is overall better, presented better.”

Ferrara took us on a tour of Julia Street and attempted to describe each gallery in his own words:

LEMIEUX GALLERIES

332 Julia St., 504-522-5988; lemieuxgalleries.com

Started over twenty years ago by Denise Berthiaume, a local who does great things, focuses on a lot of colorful work, landscapes, still lifes, a lot of craft-based works as well. Very good local content.

SØREN CHRISTENSEN GALLERY

400 Julia St., 504-569-9501; sorengallery.com

Specializes in local artists. Mainly sells work to designers and stuff that will go over your couch. A lot of animals and things like that.

ARTHUR ROGER GALLERY

432–434 Julia St., 504-522-1999; arthurrogergallery.com

He is the grand-daddy, the old standard bearer, a mixture of older and younger artists, some exciting, some not so exciting, very much engages with the designer world. He also has his project space at 434 Julia Street, where he showcases younger artists.

BLAKE BOYD SATELLITE

440 Julia St., 504-581-2440; boydsatellitegallery.com

Not sure what he’s doing here, no one is really sure. His first show was called “Megalomania” and it was all images of him, so that tells you how that starts. If you look at the letters on the building it says “Boyd Satellite” and the initials on the door are “B.S.” Something might be up with that. He likes to operate in the shocking end of things.

CALLAN CONTEMPORARY

518 Julia St., 504-525-0518; callancontemporary.com

Formerly Bienvenue, this one’s run by Boris Slava and Steve Callan, who also have a gallery in the Quarter, both specializing in works that are ethereal and vary from sculpture to painting and everything in between. They have a very clean and precise aesthetic, stuff you can hang in your house as well, and fit into the aesthetic you’re looking for.

On Julia Street, a band entertains fans of high art at White Linen Night.

Zack Smith

ARIODANTE CONTEMPORARY CRAFT GALLERY

535 Julia St., 504-524-3233; ariodantegallery.com

Contemporary crafts, a lot of great glass, and jewelry, not necessarily the ...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• WELCOME TO NEW ORLEANS
• HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
• EIGHT AWESOME NEIGHBORHOODS
• MUSIC
• FOOD AND DRINK
• EVERYTHING ELSE IN NEW ORLEANS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• INDEX