New Orleans Live - Art & Culture

For over 50 years, painters and portrait artists have been working and displaying their artwork on the iron fence that encloses Jackson Square. This somewhat bohemian colony of artists was not a contrived creation, but rather a spontaneous outgrowth of an ever increasing tourist economy in the French Quarter following World War II. Actually, there are some records and news articles that suggest that artists occasionally sold their work from the fence as far back as the late 1800's.

The present art colony started small, in Pirate Alley, and, by the mid 1950's, had already occupied the sidewalk that defined the perimeter of Jackson Square. At it's peak, Jackson Square numbered over 300 artists, occupying every section of fence, much of Pirate Alley and the Cathedral fence on Royal Street.