Joye in Aiken is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the very best in the performing arts available to our citizens, and especially our students. In 2016, Joye was awarded the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award (South Carolina’s highest honor in the arts) for its Educational Outreach Program. 

Founded in 2008, Joye in Aiken is the heir to, and the very embodiment of, Aiken’s longstanding tradition of nurturing excellence in the arts.  The organization takes its name from Joye Cottage, a fabulous Gilded Age mansion once the center of a social circle that included America’s most prominent families.  The 60-room “cottage” hosted performances by some of the world’s greatest artists, attended by some of the nation’s wealthiest arts patrons.

Today, Joye in Aiken carries that legacy forward, but with a difference.  Where in earlier times only the privileged few in our area were able to enjoy those truly world-class experiences, now the organization brings that same magic to a much wider and more diverse audience.   In the last 17 years we have brought over 700 musicians, actors, and dancers at the top of their disciplines (primarily from The Juilliard School) to participate in the weeklong Performing Arts Festival held each March, where a wide variety of events are made available to the public at low or no cost.  Even more importantly, through our Outreach Program, those artists have taught, mentored, and inspired over 50,000 area schoolchildren.

The name “Joye in Aiken” is meant to honor the central role that Joye Cottage has played in our history while suggesting the very nature of the program itself, which has brought boundless joy to so many of our citizens.  Through our Festival and Outreach Program, we share experiences – with families and students, young and old, people from all backgrounds and all walks of life - that represent the highest, most joyful reaches of artistic endeavor.

The legacy continues.

GREGORY WHITE SMITH AND STEVEN NAIFEH

Joye in Aiken was founded in 2008 by Gregory White Smith and Dr. Sandra Field, along with Steven Naifeh. Smith, who suffered from brain cancer for almost 40 years (through 13 brain surgeries), died of his cancer in 2014.

Naifeh and Smith are the authors of 18 books, including Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, and Van Gogh: The Life, which Michiko Kakutani called “magisterial” in The New York Times and Leo Jansen of the Van Gogh Museum called “the definitive biography for decades to come.”

The two men founded the two companies, Best Lawyers and Best Doctors, which launched an entire industry of professional rankings.  Under its current ownership, Best Doctors now serves more than 30 million people worldwide, helping to find doctors for patients with serious medical conditions.

Smith was a singer and also a choral conductor who helped prepare choruses for such conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Leonard Bernstein.

Naifeh is an artist whose geometric abstractions have been exhibited widely throughout the world and appear in private and museum collections throughout North America and the Middle East.

In 1989, the two men purchased Joye Cottage in Aiken, South Carolina.  Together, they restored the historic Whitney-Vanderbilt house, a creation of both Stanford White and Carrère and Hastings, which serves as a principal venue for Joye in Aiken.

Board of Directors

Steve Naifeh, Chairman Emeritus

Sandra Field, Chairman

Susie Ferrara, President

Cathy Merrifield, Vice President

Eric Boetsch, Treasurer

Ellie Joos, Secretary

Newkirk Barnes

Jack Benjamin

James Capalino

Cliff Dyches

Kimberly Fontanez

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