Telfair Museum of Art

The Telfair Museum of Art is an art museum in Savannah in the U.S. state of Georgia. The museum is divided in three buildings, two of which are historic homes from the 19th century are standing as a National Historic Landmark listed building. The collection includes furniture and crafts of the 19th century, as well as European and American paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries.

History and Collection

The museum is one of the oldest art museums in the southern United States and is named after the patron Mary Telfair. Her brother, Alexander Telfair had, 1818-19 erected in the style of classicism in today's Telfair Square by architect William Jay, a prestigious residence at the heart of Savannah. This Telfair Academy today called building donated by Mary Telfair with the complete interior of the Georgia Historical Society to make it to a museum open to the public. After the building was expanded by the architect Detlef Lienau, it opened in 1886 as the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences. In this house today show two period rooms, the interior in the style of the 19th century, while in the other rooms, the collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures and decorative arts of the 19th and 20th centuries can be seen. The exhibits here include paintings alongside works by European artists mainly of American Impressionism of Childe Hassam, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Lilla Cabot Perry and John Henry Twachtman, or the Ashcan School with pictures of George Bellows, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, and Arthur B. Davies. Since 11 May 1976, the Telfair Academy is a National Historic Landmark.

The second building of the Telfair Museum of Art is the Owens- Thomas House. This building was built between 1816-19 also under the direction of William Jay on Oglethorpe Square, with loans to the architecture of the English Regency. Its builder was Bauwollhändler and banker Richard Richardson. In 1830 it was bought by the mayor of Savannah, George Welshman Owens, in whose family the house was more than 100 years. His granddaughter Margaret Thomas bequeathed the building in 1951 to the Telfair Museum of Art in the building are the Owens family furniture and American and European arts and crafts from the period 1750-1830 to see. The Owens- Thomas House is like the Telfair Academy since May 11, 1976, a National Historic Landmark.

Childe Hassam: Avenue of Allies

George Bellows: Snow- Capped River

Gari Melchers: The Unpretentious Garden

The recent building of the Telfair Museum of Art is the Jepson Center. This was built by architect Moshe Safdie building was completed in 2006. It is also located on Telfair Square and has rooms for temporary exhibitions, an auditorium and rooms for art education. In addition here is to see the collection of the art historian Kirk Varnedoe. These include works on paper by 20th-century artists such as Jasper Johns, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Richard Avedon.