Charleston's STATE OF THE ARTS

From new galleries to thrilling festivals, a city steeped in history emerges as a modern cultural mecca. Our editor in chief reports on what to see now.

- WRITTEN BY STEELE THOMAS MARCOUX

EVERY MONDAY evening, artist Jonathan Green holds court at the Thoroughbred Club at Charleston Place hotel. He started the ritual, a generous serving of urbane hospitality with a dash of spontaneity, when he moved back to South Carolina full-time as a way of reconnecting with friends, admirers, and collectors who want to hear what Green has to say about art, and about life. He never knows who will be there—only that he’s having salmon and a glass of champagne, and he won't be dining alone.

Watching Green field questions about everything from his Gullah upbringing to his formal training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, you'd never know he wasn't allowed to have friends as a child. “I had a calling to be an artist from birth. I've been drawing all my life, and my family expected greatness from me, so they kept me isolated from the outside world,” he says. Here, though, he’s a bona fide Ambassador of the Arts (a title he was given by former Charleston mayor John Tecklenburg in 2017), doling out soulful words of wisdom with ease: “I live in the moment—I don't worry about the past, because it's passed, or the future, because we'll make the future.”