Courtesy of Duncan McClellan Gallery
Far from the major art capitals, works by internationally reputed artists and local standouts can be found in galleries on unassuming Southern streets. Indeed, many of the treasures in these locations couldn’t have emerged anywhere else. From Alabama folk art to Lowcountry landscapes to North Carolina crafts, a strong regional sensibility runs through the collections of the 10 galleries recommended here, as well as a relaxed, approachable vibe and a true sense of place.
Courtesy of Duncan McClellan Gallery
Duncan McClellan Gallery
St. Petersburg, Florida
When glass artist Duncan McClellan and his wife, Irene, transformed a dilapidated fish- and tomato-packing plant into a kaleidoscopic wonderland of glass in 2009, they helped spark an artistic renaissance. Since then, the once-industrial neighborhood where McClellan founded his gallery has become the Warehouse Arts District, home to more than 100 studios and galleries. What’s more, that stretch of the Gulf Coast has been dubbed the “Glass Coast.” Besides Duncan McClellan, there’s also the nearby Morean Arts Center (home to a permanent Dale Chihuly collection and a glass studio) and the Imagine Museum (devoted entirely to exhibiting glass). Trained at the ARS Murano Glass Factory in Italy, McClellan has created both a community center of sorts and a global glass destination. Inside, find wildly colored vessels and sculptures by 125 emerging and renowned glass artists from around the world; outside in the lush sculpture garden, see glass creatures and figures mingle with (real, live) cats, peeking out from 71 varieties of tropical fruit trees and orchids. Next door is the hot shop, which hosts free glass-blowing demonstrations.
Courtesy of Marcia Weber Art Objects
Marcia Weber Art Objects
Wetumpka, Alabama
Decades ago, gallerist Marcia Weber befriended some of Alabama’s folk art icons, including Mose Tolliver (whose works can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Jimmie Lee Sudduth (son of a Choctaw shaman who painted with mud, honey, and natural dyes and now has pieces in the Smithsonian). Today, her polished, small-town gallery houses one of the region’s best collections of works from contemporary folk, self-taught, and outsider artists. Many of the people she represents emerged far from the mainstream art world; some were inspired by revelations and visions, while others didn’t initially consider their works art at all.
Courtesy of Marcia Weber Art Objects
Since founding her gallery in 1991, Weber has moved it from Montgomery to its current space between the Coosa River and the Victorian house featured in Tim Burton’s iconic Southern Gothic film Big Fish. She has amassed more than 1,000 sculptures, paintings, and mixed media works—often made with found materials like tin, wood, and discarded objects—by the likes of artists such as Bill Traylor and Howard Finster. She has also represented several contemporary folk artists from the beginning of their careers, including Sarah Rakes, an Ozarks native known for her vibrant paintings on wood.
Courtesy of Johnson Lowe Gallery
Johnson Lowe Gallery
Atlanta, Georgia
It’s a new day for the former Lowe Gallery in Buckhead, long associated with flamboyant flair, high-end contemporary art, and celebrity clients like Sugar Ray Leonard and Halle Berry. Before his death in 2021, famed gallery founder Bill Lowe pleaded guilty to withholding artist payments and was ordered to pay restitution to the tune of $250,000.
Courtesy of Johnson Lowe Gallery
In 2022, Donovan Johnson, who started working under Lowe at age 18, took the reins of this sprawling Miami Circle institution and became one of the most prominent African-American gallery directors in the country. (At 31, he’s also one of the youngest—he wasn’t even born when the gallery was founded in 1989.) With his debut exhibition, The Alchemists, which featured the works of 28 Black artists including Thornton Dial, Mark Bradford, and Ebony G. Patterson, Johnson announced the gallery’s fresh rebranding under his name and leadership. Since then, exhibitions have showcased the work of the Brooklyn-based fine art–meets–hip hop painter Fahamu Pecou and Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte, who uses sculpture, drawing, and performance to tell stories of memory, migration, and injustice. “This gallery has always been a portal to global visual culture,” Johnson says. “I want to make good on that diversity.”
Courtesy of Helena Fox Fine Art
Helena Fox Fine Art
Charleston, South Carolina
Filled with dreamy maritime scenes, marshy landscapes, and majestic bronze herons, this elegant but unstuffy space oozes the kind of coastal charm you’d expect of a South of Broad gallery. Swedish-born Fox, who opened the place in 2003, is best known for representing the beloved Lowcountry plein-air painter West Fraser, who also happens to be her husband. Fraser’s glowing oil paintings on linen depict live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, palmetto-dotted forests, and shimmering tidal creeks. The gallery’s walls also display paintings of tall ships and lighthouses by William R. Davis Jr. and approachable stylized still lifes of fruits and birds by Patt Baldino.
Courtesy of Helena Fox Fine Art
Other highlights include functional art (spoons, cheese knives, oyster dishes) by silversmith Kaminer Haislip—who draws inspiration from Charleston’s long tradition of silversmithing—wildlife sculptures by Kent Ullberg, and Sarah Amos’s 22-karat-gold jewelry and wearable art, including delicate acorn earrings and pendants made with ancient coins and precious stones.
Courtesy of Reynolds Gallery
Reynolds Gallery
Richmond, Virginia
The late Beverly Reynolds proved that provocative, blue-chip contemporary art had a place in Richmond when she opened her gallery in the tony Fan District in 1977, kicking off her splashy first show with Alexander Calder gouaches and Max Ernst drawings. After her death in 2014, her daughter, Alice Livingston, and longtime associate director, Julia Monroe, took over, furthering Reynolds’s vision and opening a second gallery in the buzzy Libbie and Grove neighborhood in 2021. Over the decades, Reynolds has exhibited works by the likes of Ellsworth Kelly, John Baldessari, and Jasper Johns alongside pieces by young, local artists.
Courtesy of Reynolds Gallery
“One of our favorite experiences is walking into a collector’s home where there’s a compelling pairing of artworks, like a Sally Mann photograph hanging next to a collage on paper by emerging artist Hampton Boyer,” Livingston says.
Often, the pair nabs fresh talent just graduating from the neighboring top-ranked Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. “One of our recent greatest joys has been watching the rapid rise of Raul de Lara’s career,” she says, adding that they picked up de Lara after catching his thesis show at VCU Arts in 2019. The wood sculptor’s polished but playful life-size renditions of cacti, tools, and flowers carved from walnut and mesquite have since graced the windows of the new Hermès Aspen.
Courtesy of Cernuda Arte
Cernuda Arte
Coral Gables, Florida
America has long had a fascination and fraught history with Cuban art, given the 1962 embargo on Cuban trade that persists to this day. Gallerist Ramón Cernuda sued the United States in 1989, arguing that art should be protected from embargo under First Amendment rights—and won. A longtime collector, Cuban-born Cernuda opened his gallery in 2000 and has since become known as a leading authority on Cuban art, which often features a distinct aesthetic linked to the political climate.
Courtesy of Cernuda Arte
The gallery is a family affair, which Cernuda runs with his wife, Nercys, and their son and daughter-in-law, exhibiting a seemingly exhaustive collection of the genre over three exhibition spaces. Find Colonial-era works (a 17th-century engraving of Havana; Vicente Escobar’s portraits of the elite) and art by 20th-century modern masters (see: the “Vanguardia” movement of Cuban artists who blended European modernism with primitivism, like Víctor Manuel Garcia and Wifredo Lam—the gallery’s top seller). You’ll also encounter pieces by contemporary Cuban artists (Afro-Cuban painter, sculptor, and performance artist Manuel Mendive), including those born well after the revolution (still-life painter Miguel Florido). Cernuda’s collection offers vivid insight into a culture long shrouded from American eyes.
Courtesy of Blue Spiral 1
Blue Spiral 1
Asheville, North Carolina
As this resilient mountain town recovers from the devastating damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene in September, it looks to its modern roots as an arts hub to rebuild. When the late John Cram opened Blue Spiral 1 in 1990 in a downtown Asheville commercial building, the area was a boarded-up ghost town on the cusp of cultural revitalization. Art lovers like Cram shook things up when they moved in for cheap rent and proximity to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Vibrant arts enclaves emerged—like the River Arts District, home to more than 300 working artists—and they are now working to rise again from the floodwaters. Cram’s sprawling, 15,000-square-foot gallery was fortunate: It avoided significant damage.
Courtesy of Blue Spiral 1
Blue Spiral 1 showcases the best of North Carolina’s fine art and storied crafts scene (woodworking, textiles, glass, ceramics) infused with the vibe of a chill museum. In a typical year, co-owners Michael Manes and Matt Chambers (Cram’s widower) host more than 25 exhibitions annually, which are often craft-focused (a wood or ceramics invitational, a fiber group show). Across the gallery’s three stories, discover kaleidoscopic baskets woven from archival paper and metallic threads by Patti Quinn Hill, exuberant and sentimental clay figures by sculptor Andréa Keys Connell, and Amy Putansu’s abstract dyed fiber weavings. The gallery also represents the estate of early 20th century naturalist and modernist landscape painter Will Henry Stevens, who spent his summers in Asheville. In lieu of a visit, works can be shipped.
Courtesy of David Lusk Gallery
David Lusk Gallery
Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee
David Lusk is known for celebrating the “long-term arc” of a contemporary artist’s career, having represented many of the 40 professionals in his stable since opening his gallery in Memphis in 1995, now near Midtown. There’s photographer Huger Foote, who worked as a fashion shutterbug for magazines like Vanity Fair and Interview before returning to work in his hometown of Memphis; renowned abstract painter Pinkney Herbert; and Greely Myatt, a found-object sculptor who’s had major works picked up by institutions like the Minneapolis Museum of Art. In 2014, Lusk opened a second location in the Wedgewood-Houston arts district in Nashville, and between the two sleek, white galleries, he puts on at least two dozen shows a year, often with little in common but Lusk’s conviction.
“Because both markets are relatively small in comparison to the art capitals of the world, my business has always been a smorgasbord of art—paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, installations,” says Lusk. “It runs the gamut from highly conceptual to very discernable imagery, from super abstract to highly realistic.”
Courtesy of David Lusk Gallery
Among the variety, the best of Tennessee rises to the top: Lusk represents the estate of Carroll Cloar and his surreal Southern scenery; he also showcases the vernacular landscapes of Memphis-born William Eggleston and a collection of floral still lifes by preeminent Nashville pop artist Red Grooms. Sometimes Lusk coordinates with his wife, the director of the nearby Metal Museum in Memphis, as with a recent exhibition of Myatt’s metal “quilts.”
Courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery
Arthur Roger Gallery
New Orleans, Louisiana
In a city known for embracing unconventional creativity, Arthur Roger pioneered the contemporary arts scene nearly half a century ago to much fanfare. His efforts helped build the careers of revered Louisiana artists, including the late whimsical graphic painter Robert Gordy and exuberant abstract painter and metal sculptor Ida Kohlmeyer. Find their work at his stately brick gallery in the heart of the Julia Street arts hub in the Warehouse Arts District, as well as that of internationally known artists like Dale Chihuly (it’s one of just three galleries that can exhibit his art). You’ll also discover artists who epitomize the Big Easy, like bead artist Big Chief Demond Melancon. Best known for his elaborate Mardi Gras Indian suits of beadwork and feathers on canvas, Melancon has created costumes worn in the carnival celebrations of the Black Maskers, who draw from Native American, West African, and Afro-Caribbean cultures. For the gallery, he creates glass-beaded portraits of icons like Frida Kahlo and Aretha Franklin.
Courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery
Roger is so committed to furthering the arts in his native city that in 2017, he stripped the walls of his own French Quarter home and gifted his personal collection (more than 80 works) to the New Orleans Museum of Art in conjunction with the gallery’s 40th anniversary.
Courtesy of Jackson Fine Art
Jackson Fine Art
Atlanta, Georgia
Jane Jackson introduced Atlanta to top-tier photography when she opened Jackson Fine Art on a quiet street in Buckhead in 1990. She ran the 2,000-square-foot gallery until 2003, when she was tapped to be the first director of the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, one of the largest and most revered private photography collections in the world. (She’s since founded the Object Space inside Sandler Hudson Gallery, focused on high-end crafts, including ceramics, tapestries, and woodwork.) Jackson passed the keys to longtime co-director Anna Walker Skillman, who in turn brought on Andy Heyman as co-owner. Together, the two have expanded the gallery’s reach, number of works, and space. Last year, Jackson Fine Art moved into its new 4,000-square-foot Buckhead cottage across the street from its original location, growing its blue-chip offerings while maintaining a cozy, convivial vibe.
Courtesy of Jackson Fine Art
The gallery has placed its photographs in wide-ranging, esteemed collections, including those belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and musical artist Usher. Serving as a veritable history of the best of 20th- and 21st-century photography, it showcases historical photojournalism, stylized still lifes, abstract compositions, celebrity portraits, Southern landscapes, and digital manipulations. Offerings range from classic black-and-white silver gelatin prints (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans) to contemporary mixed media (Angela West, Shanequa Gay). Gay’s reinterpretation of her great-grandfather’s 1920s and ’30s photographs were featured in a solo exhibition in 2024; in early 2025, catch exhibitions featuring works by Sally Mann, Cig Harvey, Julie Blackmon, and Erik Madigan Heck.
• • •
Hotel? Gallery? Maybe it’s both!
Art isn’t always a backdrop at hotels. Sometimes, it’s the main attraction. These sites across the South double as destination galleries.
Louisville-based 21c bills its collection of hotels (including properties in Lexington, Durham, and Bentonville, Arkansas) as “museum hotels,” with a combined 75,000 square feet of exhibition space. A 30-foot-tall, gilded replica of Michelangelo’s David signals to downtown Louisville visitors that this stop on Museum Row might not be a traditional gallery. Once inside, contemporary art fills most every corner and hallway of the 21c Museum Hotel. The boutique hotel chain rotates its permanent collection and traveling exhibitions throughout its properties, free to visit 24/7. Don’t miss the trademark red penguins perched on the rooftop.
Courtesy of Quirk Richmond
At Quirk Richmond, local and regional artwork adorns all 75 rooms, the elegant historic lobby, and the dedicated glass-walled gallery. Find colorful fiber works, hand-blown teapots and teacups commissioned from a local artist for the lobby coffee bar, and papier-mâché portraits of local icons (like the neighborhood UPS carrier) displayed in halls and elevator vestibules like family portraits. Some pieces are part of the collection of the owners, Ted and Katie Ukrop, who started the gallery a decade before opening the hotel in 2015; other artwork is for sale.
Courtesy of Casa Monica Resort & Spa
Hundreds of pieces of art from the massive collection of hotelier Richard C. Kessler adorn the swanky lobbies and hallways of his Kessler Collection properties, and six throughout the South feature dedicated galleries with local and international art for sale. The hotels weave art into the overall design, too: The historic Moorish Revival–style Casa Monica Resort & Spa in St. Augustine, Florida, features original arches and beams hand-stenciled in gold leaf by a local artist, plus Old World–esque canvas mosaics commissioned by Kessler. Meanwhile, the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Greenville, South Carolina, leans into a Western and Native American aesthetic, displaying artifacts, fossils, and minerals.
Courtesy of Faena Hotel Miami Beach
Amid a cultural boom in Miami, art hotels have emerged as a new standard. The Betsy Hotel in South Beach showcases rotating exhibits in its lobby and other public spaces (including a dimly lit bar with 24 lightboxes for displaying works). Permanent exhibitions include a 1,600-square-foot gallery with an extensive photograph collection (see: Bob Bonis’s shots of the Rolling Stones), a Zimbabwean sculpture garden, and a giant bulbous bridge known as the Orb that’s a work of art in itself. The Sagamore South Beach has been known for art exhibitions and installations since the art deco days, and its gallery and rotating murals have long drawn visitors. On the same stretch, the flashy Faena Hotel Miami Beach is part of the multi-block “Faena district”—which touts its own contemporary art program—by Argentine developer Alan Faena (filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and costume designer Catherine Martin were collaborators). Find the nonprofit gallery Faena Art adjacent to the hotel, plus fantastical installations both rotating and permanent (you can’t miss the beachside gilded wooly mammoth skeleton by Damien Hirst).
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Southbound.
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