The Arts For Arts' Sake Celebration Has Become A Populist Ritual In The Big Easy.

Among the arts of the Crescent City, the music, food and literature have long been well known, high-impact hitters on the Richter scale of world culture. Perhaps the brilliance of Louis Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Prudhomme, and Tennessee Williams have made the visual arts appear less luminous by comparison: If this segment of the culture seems low-key; look again -- art and art...