More Time in Charleston
The Gibbes Museum of Art starts off our full day in Charleston. We have lunch on the water at Fleet Landing, then learn about the local human and natural history at The Charleston Museum. Next we drive past several historic buildings, including the Old Slave Mart Museum and Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon.
Gibbes Museum of Art
We began our day at the Gibbes Museum of Art, a premier collection of fine art dating back to the 1700s, with a particular emphasis on works connected to Charleston. The museum has been located in a beaux arts-style building on Meeting St. since 1905.
Pietro Rossi, Veiled Lady, 1882
John Devaere, The Wreck of the Rose in Bloom, 1809
Paul Gauguin, La ferme de la Groue à Osny, 1883
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, View of a Town and Port from a Window, 1893
Joshua Lockwood, Long Case Clock, c. 1780-90, mahogany. John Francis Rigaud, John Moultre III and Family, c. 1782.
Mary Whyte, Iron Man, 2000
George Biddle, King St. Movie, Charleston, South Carolina, 1931
Stephen L. Hayes Jr., They Combined Beauty, 2015. Hayes won the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art.
Jonathan Greene, Corene, 1995
Georges Schreiber, The White House: King Street, Charleston, South Carolina, c. 1945
Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Wild Rice Fields, c. 1920s
Karl Zerbe, Church Street, Charleston, 1944
Sergei Soudeikine, The Hurricane Scene from Porgy and Bess, c. 1935
Grainger McKoy, Wilson’s Snipe, 1978
Anna Hyatt Huntington, Maribou with Fish, 1934
Anthony Thieme, Morning Light near Charleston, South Carolina, c. 1940
Lorenzo Bartolini, Trust in God, 1836
Henry Inman, An Abbey Window, c. 1830s
The museum also had a special exhibition of beautiful Japanese prints.
Fleet Landing
For lunch, we picked Fleet Landing, extending into Charleston harbor on a squat thumb of a pier. Dad made a correct selection, choosing the Fried Green Tomato Stack with terragon crab and creamy shellfish sauce.The Charleston Museum
Founded in 1773 and opened to the public in 1824, the Charleston Museum is and considered to be America’s first museum. Its highly regarded collection includes historic artifacts, natural history, and decorative arts.
Historic Buildings
As the day lengthened, and isolated drops of rain tapped at our windshield, Dad and I drove around historic Charleston to see some of the sights we had missed. We decided to stick to the streets and not venture inside any of these buildings, because we were well-satiated with museums and, frankly, did not have the appetite to tour a former dungeon or slave mart.The Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon. Built in 1767-71, it is one of the three remaining buildings in the U.S. where the Constitution was ratified. It served as a custom house, Revolutionary War prison, and a City Hall.
St. Michael’s Church, which opened in 1761, is the oldest church edifice in the city. It was raised on the site of the original St. Philips church from 1680, which was the first Anglican church south of Virginia.
The current St. Philip’s Church, built in 1836 with stuccoed brick, three Tuscan pedimented porticoes, and a tall spire. Among those buried here is John C. Calhoun, the seventh vice president of the United States.
The Old Slave Mart Museum is the site of former antebellum slave auction building. Constructed in 1859, it is considered to be the last slave auction house that existed in South Carolina.