On Friday evening, February 2, 1939, the city of Florence got its first look at what would come to be the Florence Museum. The public library on the corner of Pine and Irby streets opened its downstairs doors to a crowd of people who had come to see the guest speakers, two archaeologists, both of them professors who were invited by the museum’s founder, Jane Beverly Evans….

Scarborough traveled in the Carolinas and Georgia, painting the portraits of many prominent families in areas such as Cheraw, Darlington and Society Hill.  As was the custom during that era, Scarborough would be a houseguest of the family he was painting and his “visit” could last many months.  The Florence Museum holds seven portraits by …

Alfred Hutty was born in Grand Haven, Michigan in 1877. He moved to Charleston, South Carolina in 1919 while in his early forties. He worked as a stained glass designer in Kansas City and at Tiffany Glass Studios in New York, and had begun a long association with the Woodstock, NY art community and with Lowell Birge Harrison, a mentor of…

Anna Heyward Taylor was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1879. She is known primarily for her woodblock prints but was also a skilled watercolorist, as well as a graphic and landscape artist. A descendant of a wealthy cotton family from Columbia, South Carolina, Taylor moved to New York where she lived for much of the 1920s. In 1929…

Jane Beverly Evans, the eldest child of Dr. James D. Evans and Marie Antoinette Powell Evans, was born in 1866. The Evans family had settled in South Carolina before the Revolutionary War, and trace their descent back through the Welsh prince of Furlvs to King Arthur’s Round Table. Dr. James D. Evans was one of the founders of Florence County and his daughter Jane spent much of her life living in the city of Florence. Though her education and her art took her around the world, Jane Beverly Evans remained…

Thanks to the generosity of the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation and Florence County, allocated funding was secured for the purpose of constructing a Florence County Museum facility. While the Florence Museum Board of Trustees is responsible for the museum collection, the Florence County Museum Board was established in September of 2008 by the Florence County Council to fulfill the mission of constructing a new museum facility. The Florence County Museum board is…

Our new exhibition, South Carolina Stalwarts is now available for public viewing during museum hours. There will be an opening reception held at the Florence Museum on Friday evening, March 16th at 7:30PM. The public in invited to attend. We hope to see you there!

The Florence Museum evolved from the Blue Bird Tea Room, which was formed by the Florence Chapter of the National League for Women’s Services during World War I, which met in the old Florence Public Library building on the corner of Irby St and Pine St. The tea room was operated to raise money for …

This Art Moderne house, completed in 1939 for Joseph Maner Lawton, has housed the Florence Museum since 1953. It was designed by Sanborn Chase, then an engineering student influence by Moderne Architecture in France and later a prominent local businessman. The house features curved streamlined forms, a semicircular glass block entrance bay, and black glass …