Curators' Choice

Since Telfair Museums opened its doors in 1886, its collection has grown from one mansion and its contents (including a modest collection of family paintings, sculptures, and furniture) to more than 7,000 works of art and three distinct buildings. This exhibition, based on the exciting new publication Telfair Museums: Curators’ Choice (2021), is an opportunity for Telfair’s curators to spotlight key moments, objects, and figures in the museum’s centuries-long journey.

Telfair Museums is both the oldest public art museum in the South and one of the first museums in the United States to be founded by a woman. Mary Telfair (1791–1875)—the daughter of a prominent merchant-planter family—left a small but multifaceted collection of fine and decorative arts. Through the visions of its first director Carl Ludwig Brandt (1831–1905) and fine arts advisor Gari Melchers (1860–1932), the museum established a collection in American Impressionism, Ashcan School, and European academic paintings. In 1951, Margaret Gray Thomas (1871–¬1951) bequeathed to Telfair what would later be known as the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, as well as a significant American and English decorative arts collection. In recent years, the site has been reinterpreted to tell the stories of the house’s enslaved inhabitants and, more broadly, the history of urban slavery in the South. The museum’s growing collection of contemporary art, photography, and self-taught art is exhibited in the Jepson Center for the Arts, which opened in 2006.

Through this selection of artworks from disparate time periods and mediums, Telfair’s curators have reflected on the museum’s history, identity, and collecting practices, while offering a view of what lies ahead.