Taking In The Telfair Museum

One cause for recent pause in blog posts was some personal travel. For Mother's Day, I brought mom to Georgia for her first holiday in the Heart of the South and four days of sightseeing. We split the mini-vacation into two days in Atlanta and an overnight trek to Savannah -- always a nice break from the big city.

In Savannah, we took in some popular favorites: Wading in the surf at Tybee Island, dining at a local dive with a delicious crab boil on the menu, and a trolley tour that picked us up just after a fantastic breakfast at Huey's on the historic waterfront. We also passed the Savannah Marriott and got a reminder of the city's role as host of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games sailing competition.

With thanks to the responsive team at the Telfair Museum of Art, during a stop from the trolley tour, we experienced Telfair's Jepson Center for the Arts, a beautiful modern building on Savannah's historic Telfair Square.

According to the Telfair website, this modern expansion of the museum is designed by Moshe Safdie -- if you've been near the 1976 Montreal Olympic Stadium and complex, you've likely seen Safdie's nearby creations tied to Expo 67 (according to the archives on the website for Safdie's architecture firm, several of his other designs were built in Vancouver and will be visible during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games -- also learned today that Safdie has the commission for the planned National Health Museum near Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta).

We found the Safdie building for Telfair to be intriguing and bright. Since my mom is a specialty seamstress, we also found it curious and cool that a professional photographer was snapping photos of a model in the grand atrium at Telfair during our visit (see photos -- the gown donned by the presumed Savannah College of Art student is made of recycled Walmart and Target plastic shopping bags (disclosure: Walmart is a client of Edelman, the firm where I work).

Our visit coincided with the final days of a Telfair exhibit titled "Robert Colescott: Troubled Goods." Must admit it was not my cup of tea, but I do look forward, and hope to return, to see more of the Telfair Museum of Art's permanent collection and upcoming events.