The life’s work and cultural mission of internationally acclaimed artist Jonathan Green is now the vivid focal point of a new cultural center. Part of the University of South Carolina System, the Jonathan Green Maritime Cultural Center opened on March 28 on the campus of University of South Carolina Beaufort.
The center is dedicated to celebrating and preserving the rich maritime heritage and cultural traditions of the Lowcountry and the broader African Diaspora. It does so by delving into Green’s artistic journey, and how it was shaped by the Gullah Geechee culture he has famously shared with the world beyond the Lowcountry.
From first glance, the 3,000-square-foot new facility, located on the University of South Carolina Beaufort campus at 1211 Harrington St., is emblematic of the joyful embrace reflective of a Jonathan Green work of art.
Warm, yellow exhibition walls display the artist’s works, a vivid entree to African Diasporic culture, in particular the Gullah Geechee sea islands along the coastal South. Evocative large-scale Lowcountry scenes spotlight his signature subjects.
On an opening welcome sign, women in lavishly brimmed hats flowing with ribbons and wind-swirled dresses carry sweetgrass baskets full of flowers. On an exhibition wall, men waist-deep in dancing azure waterways wade and work alongside bobbing boats and undulating marsh, all beneath Carolina skies.
“Through the masterful strokes and vibrant colors of Jonathan Green, we witness the stories of hard labor, love of life and spiritual resilience of the Gullah Geechee community,” Michael Amiridis, President of the University of South Carolina, said in an address to a brightly attired crowd at the grand opening ceremony in front of the USCB Center for the Arts.
“Every canvas is unique and beautiful, and all of them collectively shift the storytelling from an emphasis of slavery and brutality to a triumphant story of a massive transfer of technology inheritance that defines the region to this day.”
Beyond the exuberant exhibition walls, the center offers an immersion in Gullah Geechee culture, both in its local particulars and its global context. It does so in part by sharing Green’s personal tale through text plates and archival objects, a lens on his life and his practice.
“It’s impossible to be reared without the enduring love of grandparents,” Green reflected at the ceremony, an observation that both spoke to his local upbringing and to the heritage he has famously celebrated.
Local and global
Green, who lives in Charleston, has in a sense returned home with the center’s opening. A native of Gardens Corner, a rural Beaufort County community, he then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Green was the first known artist of Gullah descent to receive formal professional training in the visual arts, and his works today are acquired by museums and collectors around the world.
The new center is a collaboration with the University of South Carolina, Green and cultural historian Dr. Kim Cliett Long, who is project administrator of the center. Long has partnered with the artist on several projects over decades, among them the Lowcountry Rice Culture Project and the 2005 ballet Off the Wall and Onto the Stage for South Carolina Ballet (formerly Columbia City Ballet) based on Green’s paintings.
In recent years, Green became captivated by Undercurrents of Power, Kevin Dawson’s nonfiction work chronicling the experiences of early African explorations around the world by following the currents. Long then became fascinated, too.
“I was interested because it shed new light on historical events in Africa that I had never heard before,” she told the Charleston City Paper. Long then visited 219 port cities, identifying the market women shaping global trade and documenting their connections to African influences.
Harris Pastides, Distinguished President Emeritus, University of South Carolina, proposed a museum in Green’s honor while he was president of the USC system. He then suggested the Beaufort campus as the artist was born in Beaufort.
Below the water’s surface
Throughout the center, the significance of the Lowcountry’s surrounding waters is revealed as far deeper than its shimmering surface.
A room illuminating the Gullah Geechee role in local waterways is anchored by a central row boat. Another devoted to education shares shelves of source material. A retail market stocks offerings certain to resonate with Green’s worldwide following, whether drawn from his body of work or from global marketplace artisans indicative of the maritime history at the core of the new center.
“We all live in this beautiful watery empire, and we think, ‘Oh, it’s scenic.’ We just love it. But it’s not scenery. It’s structure,” Long said at the ceremony.
Across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas, she explained, African and African descended people have lived and labored in maritime environments. They built port cities, cultivated tidal landscapes, navigated waterways and carried systems of knowledge that shaped agriculture, trade and community formation across continents.
Through exhibitions, educational programs, performances and research initiatives, the Jonathan Green Maritime Cultural Center will serve as a gathering place where art, history, scholarship and community come together.
At the same time, it will further the shared mission of Green and Long. Through both art and scholarship, they are bringing to light a more comprehensive understanding of the agency of the African diaspora throughout the world, in Beaufort County and far beyond.
The center opens
At the March 28 opening ceremony, Amiridis underscored the center as a window to “the story of the African diaspora and its profound influence on maritime history,” one characterized by hard work and sacrifices, knowledge and significant contributions to the coastal economies of the Lowcountry, with cultural and spiritual traditions from the motherland.
The president flagged its suitability for a university location “because the mission of universities includes stewardship of history and collective memories, as well as protecting and advancing culture.”
In her remarks, Long emphasized the integral role of this often obscured past.
“Those histories have always been present, but they have not always been centered,” she said. “The Jonathan Green Maritime Cultural Center establishes that center of focus. Here in Beaufort, we are standing in a place where African knowledge transformed land and water into a functioning system of production and life.”
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