Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences

Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is a museum. I took an overnight bus from Raleigh, arriving in the October dawn. It was enchanting. Fortified by pig brains, eggs, and fresh hot biscuits at the White House, eaten while ogling a marvelous melange of locals, I started to cruise the city's historic streets.

It was too early for Ektachrome--thank God. I was reduced to my eyes. The Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences used to be the Regency house of Alexander Telfair, designed by William Jay and built in 1818.

I found the building more exciting than its paintings and sculpture, but the furniture (including rare Philadelphia chairs) in the rooms on both sides of the fairyland central court is outstanding.

But don't go to Savannah for its ashcan realists or impressionists. Go there for the Savannah. When I read a sign in the central court that said Ben Tucker's jazz trio was playing there next week, I silently cussed my bad timing and asked who Tucker was. He turned out to be the owner of WSOC, the black radio station in town, a member of Telfair's board of trustees, and--I didn't find out until I checked with Philly's resident jazz historian, Nels Nelson--one of the greatest jazz bassists ever.

I called Tucker cold, and Southern conviviality being what it is, a half hour later he picked me up in his Mercedes and we had lunch and drinks on the riverfront, at Bullfrog Springers. (Ask them where they got their name, when you visit!) I was so beguiled by this town that I rented an airplane and took sundown pictures over it an Hilton Head.

I would say that Savannah is crucial to me because it shows how much better it is to have a whole city that is a working piece of art than it is to have collected all the other works of art that are movable. Many, many other American communities have museums that give me high-class rushes; Telfair is the cerebral cortex of a city that is itself civilized.

--from 20 Museums You've Never Heard Of/Horizon Magazine 1981