Telfair Museums, in the historic district of

Savannah, Georgia Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later t ...

, was the first public

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily con ...

in the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

. Founded through the bequest of

Mary Telfair Mary Telfair (January 28, 1791 – June 2, 1875)Mary Telfair
–

(1791–1875), a prominent local citizen, and operated by the

Georgia Historical Society The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is a statewide historical society in Georgia. Headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, GHS is one of the oldest historical organizations in the United States. Since 1839, the society has collected, examined, and tau ...

until 1920, the museum opened in 1886 in the Telfair family’s renovated Regency style mansion, known as the

Telfair Academy The Telfair Academy is a historic mansion at 121 Barnard Street in Savannah, Georgia. It was designed by William Jay and built in 1818, and is one of a small number of Jay's surviving works. It is one of three sites owned by Telfair Museums. O ...

. The museum currently contains a collection of over 4,500 American and European paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, housed in three buildings: the 1818

(formerly the Telfair family home); the 1816 Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, which are both National Historic Landmarks designed by British architect William Jay in the early nineteenth century; and the contemporary Jepson Center for the Arts, designed by

Moshe Safdie Moshe Safdie ( he, משה ספדיה; born July 14, 1938) is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author, with Israeli, Canadian, and American citizenship. He is known for incorporating principles of socially responsible des ...

and completed in 2006.

Buildings

Each of the museum’s three buildings houses a collection corresponding to the era in which it was built.

Telfair Academy

The

contains two nineteenth-century period rooms, and it houses nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European art from the museum’s permanent collection including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and decorative arts. The ''

Bird Girl ''Bird Girl'' is a sculpture made in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was sculpted at Ragdale, her family's summer home, and achieved fame when it was featured on the cover of the 1994 non-fiction novel ''Midnight in t ...

'' statue is currently on view in this building as part of the museum's "BEFORE MIDNIGHT: BONAVENTURE AND THE BIRD GIRL" exhibition.

Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters

The Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters contains a decorative arts collection composed primarily of Owens family furnishings, along with American and European objects dating from 1750 to 1830. Additionally the site includes intact urban slave quarters and a

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

garden.

Jepson Center

The Jepson Center for the Arts features contemporary art galleries of American Southern art, African American art, photography, works-on-paper, two galleries for large traveling exhibitions, a community gallery, a children's gallery, and two outdoor sculpture terraces.

External links

*
www.telfair.org
Official web site {{authority control Museums in Savannah, Georgia Art museums and galleries in Georgia (U.S. state) Decorative arts museums in the United States Art museums established in 1886 1886 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Plaster cast collections Slave cabins and quarters in the United States