The Traveler opens in South Mississippi, blending art, coffee and surprises
A new coffee house and cafe opening Monday in downtown Ocean Springs is as much about creativity and community as it is food and coffee.
The Traveler is on the campus of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art off Washington Avenue, tucked behind the museum, and visitors can wander back and discover its secret garden and charms.
It’s a cafe, a gallery, gardens, and play area filled with art and color and fancy.
“It came together beautifully,” said Julian Rankin, executive director of Walter Anderson Museum of Art, who oversaw the restoration of the century-old house and the creation of art inspired by Walter Anderson’s paintings and his travels all over the world.
The space preserves the original architectural elements — the wide front porch, hardwood floors, tongue and groove walls and ceiling — yet is contemporary and reflective of Anderson’s talents and adventurous soul.
Anderson’s free-spirit whimsy is conveyed by a totem pole of bicycles, a boat in the play area and curtains of birds that sparkle in the sunlight and are magical when their colors splash across the floor of the side porch, said manager Jeanette Wright.
This is just a start, Rankin said. The menu, the programs, the pop-up dinners by traveling chefs will be refined over time to make The Traveler ever evolving and with new adventures to discover.
Invigorating food and drink
The Traveler’s opening menu is a mix of local and globally-inspired dishes. The Greenhouse in Biloxi helped them perfect the biscuits, with bacon cheddar and sweet potato two of the choices. A quinoa bowl and their Coastal bánh mì on local Le Bakery bread are filled with crunchy vegetables.
Another whimsical touch is the bowl of fortune cookies, a nod to Anderson’s travels to China, with an Anderson quote or idea tucked inside.
Pimento cheese and chicken salad with crackers are a light lunch or a cool afternoon snack. Juice and coffee are available all day, Monday through Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“We’re doing everything in-house,” Rankin said. Future plans include pop-up dinners with traveling chefs, Sunday brunches and Friday night bar gatherings.
There’s no admission charge and there’s free WiFi for locals who want to sip coffee and work awhile at one of the tables under the trees.
“We want people to spend time here like they do in any other community space,” Rankin said.
Creative friends and family
More than just a cafe, The Traveler is a vibrant extension of Ocean Springs’ creative community. It features contributions of local artists and craftspeople, many of whom are members of Anderson’s family who live in Ocean Springs and others who never met the artist but drew inspirations from his work.
Their art is displayed in front of The Traveler, continues throughout the home and carries out into the gardens. Visitors will want to look for these contributions:
▪ Adele Lawton, daughter of Mac Anderson, created the tile panels for the restaurant order counter, just inside the door.
▪ Shane Sekul handcrafted his version of Anderson’s blue jay table, the top made of cypress as Anderson’s table was, but with the legs of the table tucked under.
▪ Leif Anderson, Walter Anderson’s daughter, painted designs on sliding doors that were in his cottage.
▪ Caroline Masue Muneoka, great-grandaughter of Walter Anderson, created the hand-painted curtains, chair cushions and other textiles inspired by patterns found in nature.
▪ Luba Zygarewic, a professor at Tulane University, fashioned a colorful Luminous — Symphony of Motion out of translucent dichroic glass to resemble birds in migration.
▪ Julia Reyes created the colorful cow mural, similar to one Walter Anderson painted as his tub backsplash. The staff at The Traveler designed and built a tub couch to sit beneath the painting.
▪ Nancy Grace, an artist at Shearwater Pottery, took Walter Anderson sketches that were never made into plates, and created plates that show modes of travel — swimming, sailing and biking.
▪ Shearwater Pottery fashioned cicadas into sconces that flank the windows.
▪ Adreinne Domnick, a Mississippi artist, painted “Allison Dreaming,” inspired by a young man who worked at Shearwater Pottery and is captured in a painting inside WAMA.
▪ Bryan Milling, a local artist and fabricator, created mirrors with Walter Anderson’s blackbird image, and the WAMA staff painted vibrant murals on the walls of the restrooms.
Taking the fun outside
Outdoors, Erica Larkin and Mitchell Gaudet, owners of Studio Waveland, assembled the colorful bicycle totem in the front yard, near the children’s play area.
Local naturalist Mark LaSalle oversaw a team of volunteers to create a stage and garden beneath the trees. “He led the landscape construction as a gift to the community and museum,” Rankin said.
La Terre Farms in Hancock County will plant a pocket herb and flower garden. A cat house, which resembles The Traveler House where Mary Alice Owen lived for more than 90 years, is tucked away. “The cats were inherited with the house,” Rankin said.
Ocean Springs as it once was
People who previewed The Traveler said it feels like Ocean Springs used to be, Rankin said.
But it’s also contemporary and will be part of an emerging arts district on that end of Washington Avenue, Rankin said, together with the adjacent Springs Hotel and Palmette Flowers.
The Walter Anderson Museum is a collection of objects, Rankin said.
The Traveler is a coming together of community, he says, and will host “a whole suite” of events.
Across Washington Avenue, construction is beginning on WAMA’s new Creative Complex that he said will be a community of education and process.
“With all this, we are doubling our campus,” he said. The Traveler and the Creative Complex is the most construction since the museum was founded in 1991.
The spaces will work together. The upcoming Fire Fly Supper will be held at the adjacent community center and the local and regional chefs will use the new kitchen at The Traveler, which also can be rented for weddings or other events.
It’s all about the creative economy, Rankin said, and a sense of place as Ocean Springs as an art community.
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
