Telfair Museums houses more than 6,500 objects in its permanent collection. Eclectic Encountersgives an inside look to works that have not been seen by the public in over 10 years. The exhibition is on view August 8, 2015 – February 18, 2016 at the Jepson Center for the Arts. 

Heath Ritch, exhibit designer and preparator for Telfair Museums, has seen every work that has been added to the collection over the past ten years. As curator of Eclectic Encounters, he has organized the exhibition to give unseen and underutilized works their much-deserved moment on the gallery walls. The show is an intentional hodgepodge of eclectic works that offers a rare opportunity of discovery.

Eclectic Encounters features pieces that cross time periods and art movements to reveal the wide-range of Telfair Museums’ holdings. Telfair can only display a small number of works at a given time due to space constraints, the sensitivity of certain mediums, and the ever-rotating exhibition schedule.

“I chose these works of art deliberately for the show because most of them have not been seen for many years,” said Ritch. “The common element among the works is their power to complicate easy understanding on the part of the viewer, often through enigmatic subject matter, unusual narrative or medium, or uncommon creative processes.”