By Cyndi Sommers, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts In the wonderful world of textiles, it is very unusual to see a quilt with as much documented history as the Appliquéd Tree of Life Quilt, which is why it is my favorite quilt in Telfair Museums’ collection and why I love to talk about it. The oldest […]
The Gari Melchers Collectors’ Society, a Telfair Museums member engagement group, held its Annual Meeting and Acquisition Event on May 3, 2018. Melchers Society members voted to make a significant purchase for the museum’s permanent collection with funds that had been accruing for several years. The group’s largest purchase to date, it included five important […]
Bonaventure Cemetery boasts a wealth of visual art that makes it feel more like a sculpture garden than a graveyard. Talented artists from Savannah, the Northeast, and Europe created Bonaventure’s sculptures, carved headstones, obelisks, and architectural mausoleums for those with the means to create lavish memorials to the dead. Some of the city’s wealthy families […]
Carrie Mae Weems’ Sea Islands Series was conceived when the artist was pursuing a master’s degree in Folklore and Photography at the University of California Berkeley. Inspired by authors like Zora Neale Hurston and photographers like Roy DeCarava, Weems began to take interest in the small, isolated Gullah community on the other side of the […]
I gazed awe-stricken as one new-arrived from another world. Bonaventure is called a graveyard, a town of the dead, but the few graves are powerless in such a depth of life. The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm, undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place […]
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection showcases many painters who worked in and around Savannah and embraced the central tenets of Impressionism: light-filled natural settings loosely painted in high-key colors with visible brushstrokes; fluidity of form; and an emphasis on atmospheric transience. A “scenic impression” is the evocation of something seen, rather than […]
The Gullah Geechee culture, highlighted in Carrie Mae Weems’ “Sea Islands Series, 1991-1992,” is among the most studied in the United States. The culture and its modern-day diaspora continue to attract attention for several reasons, including that Gullah Geechees show more African influences than any other long-established American population. They helped build and survived the […]
Each week, Telfair Museums’ local artists pack up art supplies and head to a nearby community center. These artists play a vital role in Telfair’s community outreach and have one unified goal: to enrich lives through art. This fall, they visited several locations across Chatham County, most recently to work with patients at St. Joseph’s/Candler physical rehabilitation […]
by William Jay Society President Cyreia Sandlin It’s hard to believe we are only days away from the annual William Jay Society Masquerade in the Mansion! I first attended this amazing event three years ago, and I knew right then and there I had to be part of this organization. The masquerade is an event […]
Telfair Museums invites Chatham County artists to submit proposals for the third annual call to artists Boxed In/Break Out. We are excited to offer local Chatham County artists an opportunity to feature their art in the Jepson Center! This call to artists seeks entries for Boxed In/Break Out, a museum-sponsored public art installation at Telfair […]
