Telfair Museums
Telfair Museums, in the historic district of Savannah, Georgia, was the first public art museum in the Southern United States. Founded through the bequest of Mary Telfair (1791–1875), a prominent local citizen, and operated by the Georgia Historical Society until 1920, the museum opened in 1886 in the Telfair family’s renovated Regency style mansion, known as the Telfair Academy.
![]() Telfair Academy in 2015 | |
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Location | Savannah, Georgia United States |
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Type | Art museum |
Public transit access | Chatham Area Transit |
Website | www.telfair.org |
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 Telfair Academy (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 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 Telfair Academy 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.
Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters
![](../I/GA_Savannah_Owens-Thomas_House01.jpg.webp)
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 garden.
Jepson Center
![](../I/Jepson_Center_for_the_Arts_lobby%252C_Savannah%252C_GA_US.jpg.webp)
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. It contains the Bird Girl statue.
External links
Media related to Telfair Museums at Wikimedia Commons
- www.telfair.org Official web site