White Linen Night, the elegant New Orleans art event, is turning 30. Here's what to know.

Thousands of partiers wearing their summer best will pour onto Julia Street on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 3, for the White Linen Night block party. The annual event, which is sponsored this year by Fidelity Bank, is New Orleans’ biggest and most elegant annual gathering of art enthusiasts.

The outdoor stroll is the perfect time to peruse a wide variety of contemporary paintings, sculptures and photography produced by local artists and some from across the country. It’s an entertaining outing whether you know your neodadaism from your abstract illusionism or not.

White Linen Night is like the New Orleans art world’s version of the Jazz & Heritage Festival, but unlike the Jazz Fest and other major festivals, it's free, with beverage sales benefiting the nonprofit Arts District of New Orleans. Local restaurant booths and food trucks will be available for alfresco dining.

The arty block party began 30 years ago as a way to lure patrons to the Warehouse District art galleries in the dead of summer. As Times-Picayune art critic Chris Waddington explained before the first White Linen Night in 1994: “Like daily thunderstorms and roadside watermelons, the summer hibernation of art galleries is something New Orleanians have always taken for granted. Tomorrow night, a dozen galleries along Julia Street plan to overturn that tradition — and everyone is invited.”

In the early years, the galleries displayed fine craft items instead of high art, to lend the block party a more casual, accessible vibe. But eventually, WLN became the premier contemporary fine art exhibit on the calendar.

If you go

What? Fidelity Bank White Linen Night — the art block party features 20-plus gallery and museum exhibits, plus outdoor installations, live music, bars, restaurant tents and food trucks.?

Where? The 300 to 600 blocks of Julia Street, the 500 block of St. Joseph Street, the 900 block of Camp Street and in other scattered locations.

When??5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday

Wardrobe? As per the event title, summertime white linen outfits will certainly be worn by many during the see-and-be-seen event, but there’s no dress code. Any airy ensemble, suitable for the August heat, will serve.

Afterward? As the galleries close up for the night, the party continues at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., with DJs, cash bars, food trucks, and a fashion show, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

What not to miss?

Paintings by New Orleans’ pop art master Blake Boyd, pop up gallery, 440 Julia St. — For decades, Boyd has expressed his devotion to Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Darth Vader and other American icons with meticulously-made, large-scale pop paintings and photographs. In 2012, he and architect Ginette Bone established the Boyd Satellite gallery. According to social media posts, the couple plans to revisit their old space for White Linen Night.

The Louisiana Contemporary 2024 group show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St.?— This annual roundup of artists is always a giddy grab bag of styles, media, subject matter and skill levels that define the state of the arts in the Bayou State. Based on preview photos, the standout among the standouts may be “Z’Bo,” a seemingly satirical “art toy” by a New Orleans sculptor named Compton III, that combines aspects of a 1980s breakdancer with a rider in the Zulu parade.

“Inner Gardens,” paintings by Margaret Evangeline, Ferrara Showman Gallery, 400A Julia St. — Evangeline, who was the first female graduate in the University of New Orleans’ Master of Fine Arts program, came to prominence by creating artworks by firing pistols, rifles and shotguns at sheets of steel polished to a mirror finish. Her works were a form of violent abstraction that doubled as a sinister self-portrait of everyone who beheld the artwork. These days, Evangeline has turned to a decidedly less lethal medium and subject matter. She is currently producing luscious, dripping oil paintings of flowers.

The Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture exhibit at The Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St. — Curated by Shana M. griffin, this feast of Black photography, displayed in a series of historic environments — a midcentury modern den, an old-fashioned darkroom, a saloon on a second-line route, etc. — is marvelous. The exhibit opened in January, but If you haven’t seen it yet, this night would be the perfect time.

Paintings by Robert Warren at Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. — The unpredictable cartoonist, master colorist and quirky composer of paintings and sculpture is certain to delight the White Linen Night crowd.

The “Enslaved Drummer Boy,” interactive sculpture by Marcus Brown, erected outside of the entrance to the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, adjacent to Julia Street — Inspired?by an 18th-century gathering spot of enslaved people in Algiers Point that preceded Congo Square, Brown conceived the glowing, computer-generated figure of a child standing atop a Djembe style drum that produces loops of percussive sound. The “Enslaved Drummer Boy” may be outside of the official night footprint, but it’s close enough to be worth the extra trek.