Telfair Museums Lays Off 15 Percent of Its Staff

On January 9, the Telfair Museum suddenly laid off approximately 15% of its staff. Savannah television station WJCL reported the news.

While the museum offered severance packages, the layoffs were announced without warning during an afternoon Zoom call, according to former employees. Museum representatives told WJCL that the layoffs stem from reduced funding and were approved by the museum’s executive committee of the board of directors.

The Telfair Museum is the oldest public art museum in the South and consists of four institutions: Telfair Academy, Owens-Thomas Home and Slave Quarters, Jepson Center, and Telfair Children’s Art Museum.

The oldest of these is Telfair Academy, designed by the English architect William Jay for Alexander Telfair and completed around 1820. In 1875, Mary Telfair, the last member of her family, bequeathed the neoclassical mansion and its furnishings to the Georgia Historical Society to convert it into a public art museum. Its collection includes American and European art from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, also designed by Jay, were completed in 1819 and purchased by wealthy plantation owner George Welshman Owens, who lived there with his wife, six children, and at least seven slaves. The property, donated to the Telfair Museum in 1951 by Owens’ granddaughter, includes a rare example of an intact urban slave dwelling and showcases the house’s history through the lens of American slavery.

The Jepson Center, completed in 2006, is dedicated to contemporary art and rotating exhibitions, as is the Telfair Children’s Art Museum.