Telfair Museums presents Feels like Freedom: Phillip J. Hampton, the first large-scale museum retrospective of American painter Phillip J. Hampton (1922–2016), an artist long overdue for continued research and recognition. For 17 years, between 1952 and 1969, Hampton served as an influential visual arts professor and eventual department head at Savannah State College, today known as Savannah State University. He was instrumental in building and expanding a developing arts program and planned arts festivals, taught art appreciation workshops, and organized exhibitions including the first exhibition of African American art at the Telfair Academy in 1959. This new exhibition, alongside a companion exhibition The Early Years at Savannah State’s Kennedy Fine Arts Gallery, will consider Hampton’s impact alongside and as part of the broader context of African American artmaking in the mid-20th century.