Artistically Rich

Thomasville Cultural Center
An exciting arts experience awaits you at the Thomasville Cultural Center, which has served as a community arts center to over 35,000 visitors a year since the 1980s.

Diverse exhibitions include masterworks from an extensive permanent collection, nationally toured shows and the work of talented regional artists. The annual Plantation Wildlife Arts Festival showcases the finest in paintings, sculpture, carvings and photography by noted wildlife artists. A collaboration with the Thomasville Entertainment Foundation brings nationally celebrated performers to the center’s auditorium during a nine-month season.

Creativity is naturally developed through the arts. Students of all ages can attend visual and performing arts classes (such as piano, pottery, painting and violin) at the Thomasville Cultural Center. The center also serves as a network for local visual artists and writers. In an effort to promote arts in the community, the Thomasville Cultural Center’s Arts Outreach program provides a full season of productions for area schoolchildren.

Entertainment Foundation
Thomasville Entertainment Foundation (TEF) is carrying forward the tradition of excellence that has earned it recognition as one of the nation’s oldest and most respected nonprofit concert organizations. Through the efforts of an all-volunteer workforce and the generosity of the Thomasville community, TEF provides a broad range of outstanding programming.

Since 1937, TEF audiences have enjoyed opera, theater, dance, symphony concerts, choral concerts, Broadway musicals, jazz and other forms of entertainment by many of the world’s most celebrated artists. Chamber music concerts and recitals have been presented by such renowned musicians as Artur Rubinstein, Van Cliburn, Garrick Ohlsson, Yo-Yo Ma and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Other attractions on the TEF series have included the Boston Pops, Canadian Brass, Marvin Hamlisch, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

TEF Board Members were actively involved in the establishment of the Thomasville Cultural Center as a home for the visual and performing arts, and since 1986, TEF’s office has been located at the center. As a joint venture with the center, the TEF series is presented in the Cultural Center auditorium (600 East Washington Street). The series features six attractions each season (three classical concerts and three performances of lighter entertainment), drawing audiences from surrounding states.

TEF also supports a number of educational opportunities for young people. Contributions to the Thomasville Entertainment Foundation Endowment Trust enable the organization to provide concerts, classes and workshops for area youth. The Trust also provides scholarships for outstanding students in the performing arts, and has enabled TEF to assist some of the region’s brightest young talents.

Thomasville Onstage and Company
Thomasville Onstage and Company (TOSAC) has been providing the Rose City and surrounding communities with professional style theatrical productions since 1980. Citizens flock to the group’s cozy storefront theater on Broad Street to see plays of every genre. Classics, musicals, comedies and dramas have all been presented on TOSAC’s intimate stage (which is so close to the seats that the audience sees every nuance of expression and hears every whisper). Classic theater gems such as The Glass Menagerie, Lion in Winter, Angel Street, The Bad Seed, You Can’t Take it with You and Steel Magnolias have been performed, as well as, lesser known works by local playwrights.

Occasionally, the group will take the production to a larger venue if production needs demand it. TOSAC has performed shows such as The King and I and The Sound of Music.