Telfair Museums
Telfair Museums
Telfair Museums
Telfair Museums
Savannah, GA 31401
Hours:
Sunday - Monday: 12:00p - 5:00p
Tuesday - Saturday: 10:00a - 5:00p
The Telfair Museums consist of 3 museums; The Telfair Academy (shown), the Owens-Thomas House, and the Jepsen Center of Contemporary Art.
The Telfair Academy is a former mansion built from 1818-1819 for Alexander Telfair, son of Revolutionary War patriot and Georgia governor Edward Telfair.
The Telfair Academy is the first and oldest public art museum in the South. Founded through the bequest of Mary Telfair (1791–1875), a prominent local citizen, the museum opened in 1886 in the Telfair family’s renovated neoclassical Regency-style mansion, known as the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1875, Alexander’s sister Mary – heir to the family fortune and last to bear the Telfair name – bequeathed the house and its furnishings to the Georgia Historical Society to be opened as a museum. After significant renovations the building opened to the public in 1886 as the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Telfair Academy contains two nineteenth-century period rooms and houses nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European art from the museum’s permanent collection including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and decorative arts.
Today, the museum encompasses an extensive collection of over 4,500 American and European paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, housed in three buildings: the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Owens-Thomas House.
