ON VIEW JUNE 29-NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Telfair Museums is pleased to present selections from its growing collection of modern and contemporary art. Since its founding in 1886, the Telfair has collected the art of its time. This tradition was begun by Carl Brandt, the museum’s first director, who primarily collected nineteenth-century academic paintings that were in fashion at the time of the museum’s founding, and Gari Melchers, the museum’s fine arts advisor during the first decades of the twentieth century, who collected notable works by his own contemporaries—American Impressionists and artists of the Ashcan School. This collecting strategy has been continued by the museum’s leaders of more recent generations, who have amassed a sizeable collection of modern and contemporary works. Though varied in style, scale, and media, the works on view in this gallery demonstrate three particular themes found within the collection—Influence and Legacy of Abstract Expressionism,Constructed Realities: Collaged and Assembled Images, and Representation Reconsidered.