When you're the last in a long line of a distinguished southern family, what do you do with the family home? If you're Mary Telfair, you use it to found the south's oldest art museum. Built in 1819 for Alexander Telfair (Mary's brother), William Jay designed this house at nearly the same time as the Owens-Thomas House. They're both now owned by the Telfair Museum of Art, which opened in this building in 1886.

The permanent collection in the museum concentrates, logically enough, on American art from the 18th century onwards. The best pieces are American Impressionist paintings. However, there are also works by Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet. Of course, The Bird Girl, the statue featured on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, is here in the sculpture garden, too.

The real highlight is the building. It was expanded, initially, for the 1886 opening of the museum, but you can still see and feel the house it must have been. The rooms at the front are used for the worthwhile furniture collection, and preserve a sense of what kind of home Jay designed for the Telfair family.

If you're going here and the Owens-Thomas house, there's a combination ticket available that will save you 50% off the second ticket in the end.

Beautiful artwork. Sculpture of the Bird Girl resides here, for those of you have read "The Book," as so many people tried to chip off pieces when she was in Bonaventure Cemetary. The building housing Telfair has enough history in it to be an artist's dream.

This museum was fantastic. Two rooms were furnished in period-style--the Octagon room and the dining room. The dining room was filled with furniture and tableware just like they’d have it in 1819. In other rooms I saw American and European paintings and numerous sculptures. The sculpture room contained four plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures.

There was a huge mural consisting of three large paintings, which I found to be particularly interesting. It was a church scene with smiling men and woman going up the left stairs. On the right, women were dressed in black, as if they were leaving a funeral. The painting was so large that it impressed me, and I enjoyed looking into the picture to feel what was going on with these subjects.

It was nice but odd to see a painting by Grandma Moses. I had seen an exhibit of hers at the Shelburne, Vermont, museum a few years back and thought her work was more Vermont, than Georgia, so it seemed out of place here. I think it was called Dividing of the Ways.

The paintings on view represent many different styles. Primarily there are American Impressionists, but also represented are examples of social realist paintings, American abstraction, and dark realism. American Anthem: Highlights from the American Folk Art Museum was the current temporary show at the museum. It featured 125 objects reflecting both historical and contemporary folk production. Works in the exhibit include functional household textiles such as quilts and bed rugs and elaborately painted chests and trunks. Also, there were many portraits, weathervanes, woodcarvings, trinket boxes, family records, and devotional objects. I also saw tinsel paintings where glass was painted on the back and foil was applied beneath the unpainted areas to create dramatic, gleaming highlights.

Finally, there was a Kitchen Gallery in one of the two original kitchens of the Telfair mansion. It includes many features of an early 19th-century kitchen, including an original hearth, double oven, and built-in shelving. I thoroughly enjoyed this museum, including seeing the bronze-cast statue of the "Bird Girl" in front of the museum, made famous from the cover of the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Admission is $8; hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sunday 1 to 5pm, and Monday 12 to 5pm.