For serious art lovers and buyers, the Thursday before First Friday is the ideal time to visit the 18b Arts District. Preview Thursday offers art show openings, a chance to meet the artists and chat with them about their work and the first opportunity to buy featured art.

DjangoVegas! returns to downtown Las Vegas June 22 to celebrate the music of Django Reinhardt and other gypsy jazz musicians past and present. The John Jorgenson Quintet, Stephane Wrembel and his band, and Hot Club of Las Vegas will perform at the Historic Fifth Street School at 401 S. Fourth St.

The talent is set and the amphitheater is ready for another season of music with Clark County Parks and Recreation’s Jazz in the Park concert series, which celebrates its 24th year. This year, the free series will feature the Las Vegas Academy Jazz Combo, which has invited Tom Scott to perform with it Saturday .

Summer 2013 will be extra sweet for one local downtown arts institution — the Contemporary Arts Center, which is celebrating 25 years of serving the Las Vegas community through the arts.

The Rainbow Company Youth Theatre is offering numerous opportunities this summer for youth interested in theater.

Las Vegas will bring three nationally acclaimed productions to the Charleston Heights Arts Center and the downtown Historic Fifth Street School this summer, all targeted at broadening family cultural education and entertainment: “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band and “The Dragon King.”

“Les Misérables” will open the 2013- 14 Broadway Las Vegas series at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in August. The upcoming season, which runs through July 2014, is sponsored by Southern Nevada Ford dealerships. The lineup brings many of Broadway’s most beloved and famed musicals and plays to Las Vegas for the first time.

“Cowboys and Indians: Myth and Reality” is on exhibit through June 30 at the Clark County Museum, 1830 S. Boulder Highway in Henderson. The exhibit investigates popular romantic notions and widely held misconceptions of the Western frontier and examines some historical and contemporary realities.

For those who can’t pull themselves away from the tables until midnight or who don’t have time to catch dinner before a show, Ferraro’s Italian Restaurant & Wine Bar offers an option for late-night fine dining: the mezzanotte (midnight) experience. The restaurant, which presents an authentic Italian culinary experience in a family-run atmosphere, serves its full dinner menu every night until 2 a.m. From 11 p.m. until 2 a.m., guests receive 50 percent off the price of all food items and 25 percent off drinks.