The arts in Baton Rouge have arrived and are recognized both for their creative excellence and for their positive influence in economic and cultural renewal. Their power is being felt from downtown redevelopment to small-town Main Street and has allowed people to see themselves and feel good about themselves in the Central Business District, away in residential neighborhoods and across municipal boundaries. The Baton Rouge story begins beside the Mississippi River. It was the river that made the city possible and the river that has given a stage to the arts' energetic contribution to downtown resurgence and the cultural renewal throughout East Baton Rouge Parish.

Throughout this book, personal stories of artists, arts lovers, volunteer workers and others are told to bring home the immediacy of art's power to enrich the lives and work of persons who make art and persons who respond. Only because there is dialogue between a work of art and the person approaching it can there be an arts community and a larger community appreciative of the arts. Each is in the other's debt because together they give breath to the arts and together are repaid from the arts' boundless fund of beauty and grace.

CONTENTS
Painting the town rouge.
From an old capitol to an arts capital.
Arts makers in concert.
The fine art of finances.
Baton Rouge into the future.
Of ballet, balloons and Baton Rouge.

The arts in Baton Rouge have arrived and are recognized both for their creative excellence and for their positive influence in economic and cultural renewal. Their power is being felt from downtown redevelopment to small-town Main Street and has allowed people to see themselves and feel good about themselves in the Central Business District, away in residential neighborhoods and across municipal boundaries.