Discovering Southern Arts in Midtown Atlanta

In a 1917 essay, satirist H.L. Mencken famously declared the South to be an intellectual and cultural desert—and Georgia to be the worst part of it.

Almost in response to the challenge, a cadre of Southern artists and writers took up the mantle, and the next two decades are enshrined by cultural critics as the Southern Renaissance. In spite of this, I still shocked more than one person when I told them I was taking a weekend trip to Atlanta for some theatre and art culture.

It is well-known in theatre circles that a great number of plays and musicals must spend time on the regional theatre circuit in preparation for debut on Broadway, and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre has sent a number of productions onward to the Great White Way, including Aida, The Color Purple and Sister Act. During my visit, the production was Ever After, a musical based on the 1998 film.

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With art on the mind, it was easy to stroll around Midtown Atlanta to find other rebuttals to Mencken's century-old assertions. Nowadays, with a gay village with rainbow flag crosswalks and LGBT bars and restaurants like the delightfully irreverent Joe's on Juniper, there are art installations to be seen everywhere.

I'm momentarily flummoxed by the solid marble "bag" that appears to be swallowing a Fiat Panda before taking a closer look to figure out exactly what kind of work it must have taken to achieve the effect.

Another modern cuisine-minded restaurant in the neighborhood is 5Church. Well-located for pre-theatre dining, there's a lively dining room and sleek bar with inventive cocktails (many featuring bourbon, rye, or tequila). Avant-garde mixology aside, the bartenders pour classic cocktails with the same deft expertise. On the food menu is a fine selection of steaks and seafood, with typical modern favorites like charred octopus and roasted brussels sprouts.

A draw for literary hounds in Midtown is the Margaret Mitchell House. Part of the Atlanta History Center, visitors can tour the tiny ground floor apartment the writer affectionately called "The Dump," and take in the space where the novel Gone With The Wind was written (the typewriter itself is under glass at The Atlanta Central Public Library).

Docents discuss the history of Margaret Mitchell (who went by the name Peggy Marsh) and the house, which she and her husband occupied for about a decade leading up to the publication of the novel. Also of note are the collection of photographs of Mitchell as a young girl, alongside her many suitors (the docents explained she was proposed to on at least four separate occasions before her first marriage), telegrams from the book's publishers and examples of the book's numerous international editions.

Museum staff also helped visitors draw the lines between Mitchell's own status as a debutante-turned-working professional (she was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution at a time when it was particularly rare for Southern women of her class to work) and that of her heroine, Scarlett O'Hara. The Museum is about an hour's worth of entertainment and education, and passes can be purchased separately or in conjunction with the rest of the Atlanta History Center.

It's all about enough to comfortably fill a weekend and, when visitors leave, they'll be well-armed to rebut both H.L. Mencken and any modern day naysayers as to the value of the city's art scene. Art in Atlanta—it's a thing.

For more information on all of Atlanta's neighborhoods, plus details on performances and touring installations, check out the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau website.