The Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters will be closed from 10:00am – 1:00pm on Tuesday, March 21st for public school programming. We will open to the public at 1:00pm with guided tours until 4:15pm.
All sites will be closed on Friday, March 17 for St. Patrick's Day. Normal operations will resume on Saturday, March 18.
We’re growing! ArtZeum is permanently closed to make room for Telfair Children’s Art Museum, opening this Summer!
The Friends of the Owens-Thomas House, or FOT, is a group of Telfair Museums members especially interested in architecture, decorative arts, and history. Their contributions support continued preservation and interpretation efforts at the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, public programming, and emerging scholarship. Members enjoy special access to tours and lectures, invitations to events like the annual Champagne Garden Party, and exclusive visits to museums, historic homes, and private collections.
FOT Research Fellowship
To further its commitment to expanding scholarship in the decorative arts, architecture, and history of the American South, the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House of Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA announces its new Research Fellowship to support graduate students (current MA or PhD students) and emerging scholars (those having earned a graduate degree within the last five years) in the field. Awards of up to $2,500 may be used to support travel to conduct research, attend institutes or conferences in the current 2023 calendar year, or ease publication costs. While applicants with projects that examine objects or themes of relevance to the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, the city of Savannah, and coastal Georgia are especially encouraged, residency within or topics exclusive to Savannah are not required. Upon completion, recipients will be required to submit a 350-word report on their project, along with three to five images, to be shared with Telfair members via e-newsletters, social media, and on the web site. Recipients also may be invited to give a public talk on their subject at Telfair. All award recipients must acknowledge the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House and Telfair Museums in papers, dissertations, publications, or at pertinent conference presentations.
Interested applicants should submit a project description (maximum 500 words), budget, and CV to Dr. Elyse D. Gerstenecker, Curator of Historical Collections, at gersteneckere@telfair.org. Letters of recommendation also are welcomed, but not required. Deadline is April 30, 2023.
Upcoming Events
Join us for these exciting FOT events!
There are no upcoming events at this time. Please check back soon!
In February 2022, Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters saw the completion of its first major room restoration since 2014 with the opening of the Girls’ Bed Chamber. Generously supported by the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House, the southwest bed chamber on the home’s upper level has been beautifully reimagined as the primary space for George and Sarah Owens’s three daughters, Mary, Sarah, and Margaret.
Elite Women’s Education at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century with Dr. Lizzie Rogers
The historic house, in town or country, was a perfect resource to a girl, or woman, wanting to learn or gain an education during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Libraries, collections, art, wealth, and people were all at their fingertips: but of course, how accessible were these things to women? This period saw a shift, through the intellectual movement of the enlightenment, in ideas and knowledge practices that led some philosophers, like John Locke, to effectively argue that women were held back by poor education, not by their own state of being. What could a woman learn? What should or shouldn’t she know? Through the words of women from this period, and published writers such as Jane Austen (from whose Pride and Prejudice the title quotation is taken), Mary Wollstonecraft and Maria Edgeworth, this talk explores some of the ways ideas about women’s education in this period were reshaped, how elite women learned and accessed knowledge, and their experiences of doing so.
Elite Women’s Education at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century with Dr. Lizzie Rogers
The historic house, in town or country, was a perfect resource to a girl, or woman, wanting to learn or gain an education during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Libraries, collections, art, wealth, and people were all at their fingertips: but of course, how accessible were these things to women? This period saw a shift, through the intellectual movement of the enlightenment, in ideas and knowledge practices that led some philosophers, like John Locke, to effectively argue that women were held back by poor education, not by their own state of being. What could a woman learn? What should or shouldn’t she know? Through the words of women from this period, and published writers such as Jane Austen (from whose Pride and Prejudice the title quotation is taken), Mary Wollstonecraft and Maria Edgeworth, this talk explores some of the ways ideas about women’s education in this period were reshaped, how elite women learned and accessed knowledge, and their experiences of doing so.
