Nostrums for Fashionable Entertainments: Dining in Georgia, 1800-1850

Coleman, Feay Shellman

Arts & Photography

Telfair Museum of Art

Looking Back is the catalog of an exhibition held at the Telfair Museum of Art, July 16–Sept. 15, 1996.

Looking Back: Art in Savannah 1900-1960

DeLorme, Harry H.

King, Pamela D.

History & Criticism

The fascinating history of the Telfair, featuring 114 representative pieces of fine and decorative art from its vast collection, all superbly reproduced and thoroughly annotated.

Telfair Museum of Art: Collection Highlights

A guide to the unique collection of Telfair's paintings, drawings, and prints donated by twenty-two artists who either were friends with or were admired by the renowned curator and Savannah native Kirk Varnedoe (1946-2003). Each piece is reproduced alongside a remembrance of Varnedoe by the artist.

The Kirk Varnedoe Collection: With Artist's Statements, Excerpted from Interviews

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Marking the forty-fifth anniversary of the desegregation of Savannah, this book celebrates the civil rights photographs of Frederick C. Baldwin. First exhibited at the Telfair in 1983 under the title, " . . . We Ain't What We Used to Be": Photographs by Frederick C. Baldwin, these historically and aesthetically important images have recently been exhibited again, accompanied by an enhanced and expanded catalogue. Baldwin's images chronicle crucial events in the civil rights movement from voter registration drives to meetings in the longshoreman's hall to public marches and demonstrations, culminating in a visit to Savannah by Martin Luther King Jr.
Baldwin depicted the local Ballot Bus; the exhaustive efforts to convince potential voters to register and the resulting long lines of African Americans at the courthouse; protest marches and prayer meetings; and finally, the transcendent moment of King's visit to Savannah. Today, Baldwin's photographs serve as potent reminders of the struggle for equality in Savannah and as evidence of the powerful role of photography in documenting and validating that struggle. The book also contains numerous interviews with and comments of Savannahians who were active in the events of the period.

Freedom's March: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in Savannah by Frederick C. Baldwin

The Telfair Museum of Art’s Owens-Thomas House in Savannah, Georgia, is considered one of the finest examples of Regency architecture in the United States. Named a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the Owens-Thomas House was designed by British architect William Jay and was built from 1816 to 1819. In addition to its architectural significance, the house features fine furnishings and decorative arts from the early nineteenth century. The house’s rare two-story urban slave quarters alone make it a must-see stop on any tour of historic downtown Savannah. The Owens-Thomas House boasts a storied past with political triumphs and personal tragedies, offering visitors unique insight into a young American world as it evolved in the early nineteenth century.

The Owens-Thomas House

Sammons, Tania June

Showcasing more than seventy paintings from public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe, Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 explores the work of forty-three American artists drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Escaping from the rapid urbanization of their time, these artists established colonies in six communities in the Netherlands―Dordrecht, Egmond, Katwijk, Laren, Rijsoord, and Volendam―with all but Dordrecht being small, preindustrial villages. Inspired by their pastoral surroundings as well as the great traditions of seventeenth-century Dutch art and the contemporary Hague school, these American artists created visions of Dutch society underpinned by a nostalgic yearning for a premodern way of life. Some even alluded to America’s own colonial Dutch heritage, exploring shared histories and cultural connections between the two countries.
Organized by the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, Dutch Utopia examines the appeal of Holland for American artists during this period, through six pivotal themes: the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch painting; the impact of the contemporary Hague School; antimodernism and the American Progressive Movement; points of convergence in national identities; the proliferation of artist colonies in Holland; and the popular construction of “Dutchness” beyond the stereotypes of wooden shoes and windmills. Dutch Utopia includes works by artists who remain celebrated today, such as Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargent, and by painters admired in their own time but less well-known now. These include accomplished women such as Elizabeth Nourse and Anna Stanley, as well as George Hitchcock, Gari Melchers, and Walter MacEwen, who built international reputations with Salon pictures of Dutch landscapes and costumed figures. These artists were among hundreds of Americans who traveled to the Netherlands between 1880 and 1914 to paint and to study. Some lived in Holland for decades, while others stayed only a week or two, but most passed quickly through the major cities to small rural communities, where they created picturesque idylls on canvas.

Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-born artist and writer, was best known for authoring The Prophet, a collection of short philosophical essays that became one of the top selling books of the twentieth century. In 1895, Gibran, age twelve, immigrated to Boston with his family. Through a series of important connections stemming from the recognition of his creative talents at a local settlement house, the aspiring artist met Mary Haskell, the headmaster of a Boston girls’ school. Despite a ten year separation in age, the two formed an important lifelong relationship that culminated in Haskell’s patronage and provided Gibran with the security to pursue his career. In 1950, Haskell (who became Mary Haskell Minis in 1926) donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia.
Comprising two essays, this book features the Telfair’s collection of work by and about Gibran, the largest holding in the United States. The collection spans Gibran’s career from his first major exhibition at photographer Frederick Holland Day’s studio in Boston in 1904 to works created during the last years of his life. It includes photographs of Gibran and his New York studio and a portrait of the young artist painted by Lilla Cabot Perry.
Sammons’ essay discusses the visionary artist’s creations as well as addresses Gibran’s relationship with Haskell and the development of her personal collection, which makes up the majority of the Telfair’s Gibran holdings.
Bushrui’s essay focuses on Gibran’s literary contributions through six of Gibran’s English-written books from which the Telfair collection includes original illustrations by the artist. These books include The Madman (1918), The Forerunner (1920), Sand and Foam (1926), Jesus the Son of Man (1928), The Earth Gods (1931), and The Garden of the Prophet.

The Art of Kahlil Gibran at Telfair Museums

Bushrui, Suheil

Individual Artists

This exhibition catalog examines the important role Savannah played in the production and collection of silver in Georgia’s largest coastal city. With some exceptions, silver manufacturing in Savannah lasted approximately a century, from the second half of the eighteenth century to just before the Civil War. However, collecting the precious metal in its decorative form continues to the present. Building on the Telfair Museum of Art’s Savannah-related silver holdings, this exhibition catalog features pieces from numerous public and private collections containing Savannah-made silver as well as wares made in America and Europe. Adding to the Telfair’s growing body of work on Savannah’s material culture, The Story of Silver in Savannah features more than one hundred color photographs of pieces of silver connected to the city. With discussions and portraits of simple spoons made by Savannah silversmiths, elaborate tea sets and dinnerwares owned by historic Savannah families, and contemporary collections that feature important examples of American and English silver, this catalog explores the evolving relationship between this prized metal and the inhabitants of Savannah.

The Story of Silver in Savannah: Creating and Collecting Since the 18th Century

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Antiques & Collectibles

Presenting stunning reproductions of oil paintings by landscape artist Philip Juras, this exhibition catalogue offers a glimpse of the presettlement southern wilderness as late eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram would have experienced it during his famed travels through the region. Juras’s work combines direct observation with historical, scientific, and natural history research to depict, and in some cases reimagine, landscapes as they appeared in the 1770s. Juras spent years researching Bartram and revisiting important sites the naturalist wrote about in his celebrated Travels. Juras’s paintings recreate the lost southern frontier for contemporary viewers in much the same way that nineteenth century American landscape painters like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran brought the western frontier to the consciousness of the rapidly industrializing East.
Juras’s work explores many of the important and imperiled ecosystems that remain in the South today. These little-known, remnant natural communities, depicted in well-researched and meticulous paintings, are further illuminated by essays placing them in the context of Bartram’s legacy and the American landscape movement. The catalogue features more than sixty reproductions of Juras’s paintings. Presented with essays by the artist as well as Dorinda Dallmeyer, director of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program at the University of Georgia; Holly Koons McCullough, director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Telfair Museum of Art; and Janisse Ray, lauded poet and environmental advocate, the catalogue provides readers with a rare glimpse of the Southern frontier before its essence was irrevocably altered by European settlement.

The Southern Frontier: Landscapes Inspired by Bartram's Travels

Juras, Philip

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Books by Telfair Museum of Art