NIGHTS IN WHITE LINEN

By John D’Addario, via theneworleansadvocate.com

Whitney White Linen Night 2014

WHEN: Saturday, Aug. 2 from 6 to 9 p.m.; CAC afterparty from 9 p.m to 11 p.m.
WHERE: Warehouse Arts District, New Orleans, including the 300-600 blocks of Julia Street, the Contemporary Arts Center (900 Camp Street) and Ogden Museum of Southern Art (925 Camp St.)
INFO: Visit cacno.org/wwln for a list of participating galleries and information on the White Linen Night afterparty at the Contemporary Arts Center.
ADMISSION: Free for White Linen Night gallery exhibitions;
$10 admission to the Contemporary Arts Center and Ogden Museum of Southern Art

If you decide to brush off your white linen (seersucker is fine, too, but please, no polyester) and join the crowds this year, here’s an idea of what to expect.

In addition to hosting the official White Linen Night afterparty, the Contemporary Arts Center will be opening a group exhibition, “Mark of the Feminine.” Organized by guest curator Regine Basha, the exhibition features work by over 30 female and female-identified local artists.

Just across Camp Street from the CAC, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will be hosting five — count ’em! — new exhibitions that same evening, including an “immersive installation” by New Orleans multimedia artist Shawn Hall and work by students from historically black colleges in the New Orleans area.

Also at the Ogden, “Rolland Golden: An Alternate Vision” will include more than 70 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings by the venerable Southern painter. And Paul Kwilecki’s four decades of photos of his native Decatur County, Georgia, are showcased in “One Place.”

But it’s the latest installment of the annual Louisiana Contemporary show that likely will be drawing the biggest crowds to the Ogden that evening, if for no other reason than the sheer scale of the exhibition: over 40 artists from all over the state will have work on display.

Not to be outdone, Arthur Roger Gallery will mark the occasion with three shows opening in its adjacent gallery spaces on Julia Street.

Painter Francis X. Pavy explores issues concerning the Louisiana wetlands in a series of new works on view in the gallery’s main space at 432 Julia, while a suite of never-before-seen photographs from a 1956 Life magazine photo essay assignment by Gordon Parks (who was also the subject of a major exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art last year) will be shown next door at 434 Julia. An interactive digital video piece by New Orleans artist Robert Hannant in the gallery’s video room will round out the offerings.

Most of the other galleries on Julia Street and nearby will be opening exhibitions for White Linen Night, so it’s a good bet that almost any place that’s open that evening will have something new to check out.

m Keep an eye out for two shows in particular: Jean Bragg Gallery of Southern Art at 600 Julia will be showing a series of photorealistic paintings of the Louisiana wetlands (which seem to be a popular subject lately) by Will Smith Jr.; and artist Mitchell Lonas’ incised and painted aluminum panels depicting the fusion of mathematics and nature in trees, root systems, shells and waterfalls will be on view at Callan Contemporary at 518 Julia St.

And on the off chance that you don’t find anything worth waving your fan for on White Linen Night this year?

Don’t worry: Dirty Linen Night in the French Quarter is just a week away.

Francis X. Pavy. The Secret Oyster Bed, 2014. Unique oil block prints on canvas. 72 x 72 inches.

Gordon Parks. At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, 2013. Archival pigment print. 28 x 28 inches.
© The Gordon Parks Foundation

Robert Hannant. I Don’t Understand, 2014. Digital video. 12:39.