Tania Sammons, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Sites; Dr. Frank Rizza; Lisa Grove, Director/CEO

Hello Friends,

As we bid farewell to the incredible Renaissance paintings from the Uffizi Gallery, we look forward to several exhibitions on view this summer highlighting the museum’s permanent collection.

At the Jepson Center, we feature two exhibitions that demonstrate how indispensable generous collectors are in growing and strengthening the Museum’s collection. Silver from the Rizza Collection features over 400 pieces of American and English silver ranging in dates from the 18th to the 20th centuries. This recent donation by Dr. Rizza and his family—which transformed these beloved objects into public treasures for Savannah—has significantly enhanced the stature of the museum’s silver collection.

Similarly, the museum has recently received several significant donations of contemporary photography that further strengthen this important segment of our permanent collection. A selection of these new acquisitions will be on view in Act/Natural, featuring posed and candid photographs by internationally recognized artists.

We are also pleased to present a major exhibition at the Telfair Academy exploring the rich influence of New York on the museum’s history and permanent collection. New York Accents will include dozens of objects of decorative and fine arts from the Telfair’s permanent collection spanning from the 19th century to the present—including many of our best- known works.

I continue to be overwhelmed by the incredible financial support we receive from the community, which makes it possible for us to bring the arts to thousands each year. I was humbled by the generosity of guests at the recent Telfair Ball who pledged over $95,000 that night in support of our youth education programs. I am also delighted to announce generous corporate support of our youth education initiatives—including recent $25,000 gifts from Georgia Power Foundation and Gulfstream Aerospace. These funds provide critical support for educational programs including ArtZeum, Family Days, hands-on art activities, school tours, and outreach into playgrounds and community centers. Thank you!

Make a plan with friends or family to visit your Telfair this summer! I hope to see you soon. Warmest regards,

Lisa Grove Director / CEO

Free admission sponsored by the City of Savannah Department of Cultural Affairs

This exhibition highlights Telfair Museums’ significant collection of seated forms. Originally from the collections of 19th-century Savannahians and other collectors, this exhibition will showcase chairs and sofas as both functional objects, as well as sculptural forms.

The Telfair’s furniture collection represents one of the museum’s strongest holdings. Within this category, objects created for seating indicate a variety of tastes with origins of construction mostly in the Northeastern United States, especially New York and Philadelphia.

Thursday, May 9 | 6 pm | JC

Reception to follow

Courtney McNeil, Telfair Curator of Art, will lead a conversation with photographer Jerry Siegel. Siegel will show and discuss images of his work including portraits of noted southern artists from the Facing South series. A reception will follow the program.

Free to members. This lecture program and reception sponsored by the Telfair Academy Guild.

June 6, 2013 | 6 pm | TA

Many of the Telfair’s collection strengths have a strong connection to New York, including examples from the museum’s important American Impressionism and Ashcan School holdings. Highlights will include Childe Hassam’s Avenue of the Allies (1917) and Brooklyn Bridge in Winter (1904), and Ernest Lawson’s Stuyvesant Park in Winter (c. 1907). The show will also feature George Bellows’ Snow-Capped River of 1911, which depicts a view of the Hudson River and the Palisades from Manhattan’s Riverside Park and is one of the Telfair’s most significant and beloved paintings. This painting has spent the past year on view in New York, Washington, and London as part of the major George Bellows retrospective organized by the National Gallery, and will enjoy an exciting homecoming as a centerpiece of the New York Accents. Many of the works included in this section were acquired for the museum by fine arts advisor Gari Melchers, best known for his work as an expatriate artist in Holland, but who maintained a studio and professional affiliations in New York throughout his career.

Lecture by Tania Sammons, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Sites

June 20, 2013 | 6 pm

New York held a particular fascination for Savannah and the Telfair family in the 19th century. Mary Telfair was educated in New York, and she and her family traveled there frequently to visit friends and participate in the New York social season. Much of their furniture and decorative arts collection was purchased in New York, as was the fashion among their Southern contemporaries, including the Richardson, Owens, Phillips, Scarbrough/Barnsley, and Hardee families. In addition to items owned by these Savannah families, the museum has received donations and purchased other 19th-century objects made in the state of New York. Combined, the Telfair’s holdings offer both a glimpse into Savannah’s past tastes, as well as a showing of furniture and furnishings created in one of the most important design centers of 19th-century America. Featured works will include tables, chairs, sofas, a sideboard, mirror, window seats, center table, and silver. Objects will be displayed both within the exhibition galleries, as well as identified throughout the period rooms in the Telfair Academy and the Owens-Thomas House.

For Immediate Release: April 5, 2013

Contact: Kristin Boylston
Director of Development and Communications
912.790.8890
boylstonk@telfair.org

Telfair Museums is Recruiting Teens
Applications due by May 31, 2013 

(Savannah, GA)-  Telfair Museums announced today that applications are now being accepted for its re-envisioned Teen Council. The original Teen Advisory Council began in 2006 as a way for teens to voice their opinions in the museum and implement programs for teens, by teens. The re-imagined Teen Council will continue to play a major role in making art more accessible by actively engaging teens in their community and encouraging teens to connect with art on a personal level.

Members of the Teen Council will help the museum create products and programs specifically designed for teens, often identified as one of the most underrepresented groups at museums. Telfair Museums will select up to 10-20 hard-working, creative teenagers who want to engage with art in their community to participate in the Teen Council.

Examples of activities members will be involved in include:

• Plan, support and promote teen initiatives at the Telfair and within the community
• Design and execute one large project (to be determined by the Teen Council), targeted at teens, that will be made available to the museum’s audience at large
• Gain knowledge and leadership skills by attending and participating in lectures, group discussions, artist workshops and leadership training sessions
• Serve as volunteers assisting with museum classes, public events and community programs
• Explore the professional roles and functions of various museum departments

All interested youth are encouraged to apply. The Teen Council is free and open to the public. Applications and criteria for selection can be found at Telfair.co/TEENCOUNCIL.

Eligibility and Requirements:
Students must be:

Between the ages of 14- 18 and high school students during 2013-2014 school year

Mature, reliable and enthusiastic about art

Attend twice-monthly meetings
Commit to nine months of service (September 2013- May 2014)

Interested in gaining museum knowledge

Selection Procedure:
Applications are due by May 31, 2013
Interested students may apply online by going to Telfair.co/TEENCOUNCIL

Students will be required to include a teacher recommendation

Benefits:
Participants will enjoy:
Free student membership to Telfair Museums

Private lectures and talks by museum staff

Exclusive behind-the-scenes tours of the museum

Workshops and talks with visiting artists

Opportunity to create a project that will be made available for the public to view

Chance to earn 30+ hours of art related community service

Telfair Museums Teen Advisory Council certificate

ABOUT TELFAIR MUSUEMS
Telfair Museums, the oldest public art museum in the South has been an integral part of Savannah’s social landscape for over a century. Since opening its doors to the public in 1886, the museum has grown from a renovated family mansion into a distinguished cultural institution boasting three architecturally-significant buildings; a permanent collection of approximately 6,000 works of art from America and Europe, dating primarily from the 18^th-21^st centuries; and a history of dynamic educational programming, community outreach, and exciting exhibitions. Located in Savannah’s vibrant historic district, the museum consists of the Telfair Academy and the Owens-Thomas House—two circa 1829 National Historic Landmark buildings—and the contemporary Jepson Center. Visit www.telfair.org  for more information.

Download as a PDF »

Lecture by Harry DeLorme, Senior Curator of Education

July 11, 2013 | 6 pm

The twentieth-century portion of the exhibition includes a selection of works representing the exchange of ideas between Savannah and New York. Included are Savannahians Christopher A.D. Murphy, Augusta Oelschig and Luther Vann, who worked in New York in the 1920s, 50s and 40s-80s respectively. Also highlighted are New York-based artists who worked in Savannah over extended periods of time, such as Alexander Brook and William Scharf. Post-World War II artists working in New York are represented in a group of works from the collection by abstract expressionists James Brooks, Conrad Marca-Relli, and Elaine de Kooning. The exhibition also represents major artists working in New York in recent decades–including Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein. Works by these artists and other notables were given to the museum in honor of Museum of Modern Art curator and Savannah native Kirk Varnedoe in 2006. The exhibition concludes with visiting artists of recent years who have worked with the Telfair, among them Tim Rollins and new media artist Daniel Shiffman.

We had the opportunity to sit down with artist Sarah Frost when she visited Savannah to begin the process of installing Arsenal. Sarah Frost was born in Detroit and grew up in Rochester, NY. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. Frost’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions regionally, and she has her first show in New York in 2010. She has also received numerous awards and grants, including the inaugural Riverfront Times’ Visual Arts Mastermind award in 2008 and grants from Arts in Transit and the Missouri Arts Council.  Most recently she won the Great Rivers Biennial 2010, a grant funded by the Gateway Foundation and solo exhibition at Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis. She currently lives and works in St. Louis.

Sarah Frost: Arsenal will be on view at the Jepson Center from April 26-September 22, 2013.

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Telfair Museums: Describe your work and the idea behind it.

Sarah Frost: I look at is as sometimes I like to collect things and use those things themselves; and sometimes I transform those things by taking the form but making it in a different material. In the case of Arsenal I found the forms, but I found them online and I gave them form again in a different place — in my studio — so that was about recreating existing forms.

I guess this piece came about… it’s the last in a series about communication. The QWERTY pieces, with computer keys, those were part of a body of work that had to do with discarded technology that was used in communication. Telephone cords, communication wires, scuzzy cables, power cords, various other things… the QWERTY pieces grew out of that, and Arsenal grew out of that.

It’s interesting to me, the objects that bear the fingerprints or residue of their users. In the case of power cords or scuzzy cables, computer keys, two different keys or cords look very similar and may be the same model, but no two are ever the same because different people used them. In the case of keys you can see the residue of fingernail polish and great or paint or soda, individual wear patterns — some have letters from other languages taped with scotch tape on the keys. I like that push/pull between things having a mass of something that looks very uniform, but then upon closer inspection you realize it’s not uniform.

In the case of Arsenal the mass was sort of this really large community online with this large number of pieces that they have created, so that’s a little different, but each video was unique and each creator unique. The stills help reference the skills and variety of guns and scopes and ammo belts help reference the breadth of the community.

TM: How did you discover this online community?

SF: Well I won the Great Rivers Biennial 2010, and had a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, and I had an idea that I wanted to hang something from the ceiling because they’re so insanely high; but I didn’t have a subject matter. So I was poking around and since my previous body of work was all about communication that was interesting to me, I was poking around online. I can’t say it was a complete accident, because I was thinking about it and looking for ideas that would fit in the space, but the first time I saw one of those videos it knocked my socks off. You know, it was this boy who looked like he was 7 or 8 with a high, squeaky voice showing me how this semi-automatic — paper version of a semi-automatic weapon — worked. And I didn’t even—magazines, ejecting it, I didn’t know any of that and I couldn’t believe this little kid was showing me on his paper model, so that really made a big impression.

TM: Did you think of using a material other than paper?

SF: I wanted to stick with paper for two reasons. One, I was impressed with how simple the means were that the boys were using, just paper and tape. Two, I like the way white on white forms look. A lot of my work up to that point was (with the keyboards) white, off white, hundreds of shades of beige, grey, white — I like lots of variations of the same color.

It was important to stay true to the source, although I did raise the level of craft because the pieces had to be able to hang for 3 months in the museum. SO I did make a few changes sometimes, but for the most part the forms stayed true to what the original was.

TM: Why do you hang the pieces in the space with monofilament wires?

SF: I was so inspired by the original space that I thought hanging would accentuate that, but I also think the negative space around each one of these shapes is so interesting. These are really interesting shapes and often times if you pack them together you can’t distinguish the individual features of each one. The negative space is very important. Hanging was a way to maximize taking in the individual features of each one. There are so many cool features like scopes and bipods and things that stick out.

TM: Do you find it challenging to install an exhibition such as this one in different gallery spaces?

SF: I do, but it’s a great challenge. One of my favorite things to do is make work for specific spaces, and I was so lucky to have the opportunity to display in these spaces. When I saw the gallery with the acute angle in the corner and the curved wall and angle of the ceiling I was so amazed by it. I’m really excited to see how it will look. But of course I had to rethink a lot of things from the original and so the way I went about it was to look at plans and construct a model in my studio, so I have scale replicas of a whole lot of the pieces so I could experiment with different configurations. I peer at eye level — scale eye level — to see what it would look like.

TM: What were your thoughts when you discovered this community and the material they were creating?

SF: There were a bunch of things that attracted me to this — one is the ingenuity of these kids. They figured out how to make folding stocks and spinning chambers, a lot of functional things, and create these (sometimes) complicated things. And then they had the ingenuity to film themselves explaining it, making it, and then post it online. It almost was like a community of sculptors, form makers, who often collaborated.

For example, one guy would make a video on how to make a curved magazine because so many people had responded to his previous posts and videos and I love that collaborative creative work.

At the same time I was really taken aback by this information — more information than I had ever seen about how these weapons were put together and worked and it seemed like an interesting area to sort of mine and dig deeper. In using found objects I see myself as a bit of an anthropologist; instead of having an agenda I represent them in a different context. Instead of being at home by myself on the computer I have recreated these objects and I’m presenting them in the context of a museum, which people will come and look at and infer what they will.

Of course it was provocative to me because it’s kids and guns, but it was primarily provocative to me because it’s primarily boys, touching on masculinity and almost an aspect of sexuality, more than just guns. I’m sorry it’s become even more relevant now, it seemed provocative 3 years ago when I first created it and it seems even more apropos now, and I’m really sorry to say that I don’t have a brilliant conclusion.

I still think it’s an interesting reflection of our culture.

Milutin (preparator at Telfair Museums) was saying that when he was a kid he was making boats and planes out of paper, picking up sticks and making them fly. Others chimed in saying that today boys will pick up those same sticks and they’ll be guns. So there seems to be a parallel… I don’t have the answers, but it is striking that I didn’t see any videos posted by girls in the YouTube community.

TM: If you were a tube of paint, what color would you be?

SF: I’m torn between red or green… green is nice and calm, but red is such a great color. Since I’m wearing all red today, I’ll go with red.