Program Details
Telfair Museums and Telfair’s Friends of the Owens-Thomas House present the first annual Margaret Gray Thomas Lecture by Dr. Tiffany Momon in conjunction with Roots in the Rushes: African American Basketry of the Lowcountry. Dr. Momon will lecture on the artistry and labor of enslaved and free Black craftspeople, with an emphasis on basketmaking in the Lowcountry. A scholar of African American histories and material culture, Momon is currently the Associate Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South. Her efforts to recover and preserve documentation of the lives and contributions of Black artisans and craftspeople in American history form the foundation of the groundbreaking and award-winning digital humanities project, the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive. This lecture is free and open to the public and sponsored by Telfair Museums’ Friends of the Owens-Thomas House. Learn more about the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House’s efforts to support scholarship on decorative arts, architecture, and social history at Telfair here.
In 1951, Margaret Gray Thomas bequeathed her family home and its contents to the Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences to be “preserved, maintained and used as a museum.” Her pride in her home’s history has contributed to years of art historical research and preservation that has shaped the institution. The Margaret Gray Thomas Lecture series was established to honor her benefaction and recognize her as a pivotal steward of art and heritage.