The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical List of regions in the United States, region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the south ...

. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on

Peachtree Street Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta. Beginning at Five Points in downtown Atlanta, it runs North through Midtown; a few blocks after entering into Buckhead, the name changes to Peachtree Road ...

in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28,985 m²) and a division of the

Woodruff Arts Center Woodruff Arts Center is a visual and performing arts center located in Atlanta, Georgia. The center houses three not-for-profit arts divisions on one campus. Opened in 1968, the Woodruff Arts Center is home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlant ...

. The High organizes and presents exhibitions of international and national significance alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of art, and is especially known for its 19th- and 20th-century American decorative arts, folk and self-taught art, modern and contemporary art, and photography. A cultural nexus of Atlanta since 1905, it hosts festivals, live performances, public conversations, independent art films, and educational programs year-round. It also features dedicated spaces for children of all ages and their caregivers, an on-site restaurant, and a museum store. In 2010, it had 509,000 visitors, 95th among world art museums.

History

John Singer Sargent - Ralph Curtis on the Beach in Scheveningen

The museum was founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association. In 1926, the High family, for whom the museum is named, donated their family home on Peachtree Street to house the collection following a series of exhibitions involving the

Grand Central Art Galleries The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Ed ...

organized by Atlanta collector J. J. Haverty. Many pieces from the Haverty collection are now on permanent display in the High. A separate building for the museum was built adjacent to the family home in 1955. On June 3, 1962, 106 Atlanta arts patrons died in an

airplane crash An aviation accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the ''intention of fl ...

Orly Airport Paris Orly Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Orly), commonly referred to as Orly , is one of two international airports serving the French capital, Paris, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, while on a museum-sponsored trip. Including crew and other passengers, 130 people were killed in what was, at the time, the worst single plane aviation disaster in history. Members of Atlanta's prominent families were lost including members of the Berry family who founded

Berry College Berry College is a private liberal arts college in the Mount Berry community adjacent to Rome, Georgia. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Berry College was founded on values based on Christian pri ...

. During their visit to Paris, the Atlanta arts patrons had seen ''

Whistler's Mother ''Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1'', best known under its colloquial name ''Whistler's Mother'' or ''Portrait of Artist's Mother'', is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1871. ...

'' at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

. In the fall of 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent ''Whistler's Mother'' to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street. To honor those killed in the 1962 crash, the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center was built for the High. The French government donated a

Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...

sculpture ''The Shade'' to the High in memory of the victims of the crash.

Architecture

In 1983, a building designed by

Richard Meier Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...

opened to house the High Museum of Art. Meier won the 1984

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

after completing the building. The Meier building was funded by a $7.9 million challenge grant from former Coca-Cola president Robert W. Woodruff matched by $20 million raised by the museum. The building contains 135,000 square feet with about of gallery space. In 2005,

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (20 ...

designed three new buildings which more than doubled the museum's size to , at a cost of $124 million. The Piano buildings were designed as part of an overall upgrade of the entire Woodruff Arts Center complex. All three new buildings erected as part of the expansion of the High are clad in panels of aluminum to align with Meier's original choice of a white enamel façade. Piano's design of the new Wieland Pavilion and Anne Cox Chambers Wing features a special roof system of 1,000 light scoops that capture northern light and filter it into the skyway galleries. In 2018 the Museum hired the New York-based architecture firm of

Annabelle Selldorf Annabelle Selldorf (born 1960) is a German-born architect and founding principal of Selldorf Architects, a New York City-based architecture practice. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and the recipient of the 2016 AIA ...

to design a reinstallation of its collection galleries across the Meier and Piano buildings. The work included a new system of gallery organization, lighting systems, and exhibition furnishings to create a more closely integrated series of collection experiences across the Museum’s various curatorial departments.

Collection

The High Museum of Art's permanent collection includes more than 18,000 artworks across seven collecting areas: African art, American art, decorative arts and design, European art, folk and self-taught art, modern and contemporary art, and photography. More than one-third of the High's collection was acquired after the museum announced its plans for expansion in 1999. Highlights of the collection include works by

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; March 5, 1696 – March 27, 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an impo ...

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Martin Johnson Heade Martin Johnson Heade (August 11, 1819 – September 4, 1904) was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds (such as hummingbirds), as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. His pai ...

Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange' ...

Clarence John Laughlin Clarence John Laughlin (1905 – January 2, 1985) was an American photographer best known for his surrealist photographs of the American South. Biography Early life Laughlin was born into a middle-class family in Lake Charles, Louisiana. H ...

, and

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

. African Art To reflect the continent’s deep, rich history while foregrounding recent innovations, the High’s African art collection includes a diversity of art forms from ancient through contemporary times. To represent the depth and breadth of the African diaspora, the High continues to strengthen its holdings of works by artists of African ancestry, including African American artists, to highlight cultural bonds throughout the Black Atlantic world and beyond. The heart and soul of the African art collection consists of extraordinary examples of masks and figurative sculptures, enriched by exceptionally fine textiles, beadwork, metalwork, and ceramics. Antiquities include an animated terracotta sculpture of a female torso wrapped in snakes (ca. 1200–1500). From the region of ancient Djenne, one of Africa’s oldest cities, this work represents Sogolon, mother of Sundiata, founder of the Mali Empire. Along with this work, a Qu’ran (ca. 1600) from Timbuktu, Djenne’s sister city, highlights art of the Mali Empire, one of the largest and most important kingdoms the world has ever known. American Art The Museum’s American art collection includes more than 1,200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints made by American artists between 1780 and 1980. With particular strengths in historic American sculpture and painting, the collection demonstrates the evolution of a distinctly American point of view in artistic representation. From early American portraiture to the splendor of the Gilded Age, the High’s nineteenth-century collection includes works by John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Eastman Johnson, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Frederick Kensett, John Henry Twachtman, Harriet Hosmer, Edmonia Lewis, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mary Cassatt, and John Singer Sargent. The High also holds works by America’s most progressive artists of the modern age, from the Stieglitz Circle and abstract painters, to artists concerned with social justice and reform, to those rooted in the American art scene. Decorative Arts and Design The decorative arts and design collection explores the merging of function and aesthetics through form, material, process, place, and intent. It features the renowned Virginia Carroll Crawford Collection—the most comprehensive survey of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American decorative arts in the southeastern United States—with important works by Alexander Roux, Herter Brothers, Tiffany & Co., and Frank Lloyd Wright. Other notable gifts include the Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics from 1640 to 1840. The collection’s international contemporary design holdings recently have expanded with the addition of significant works by Joris Laarman Lab, Jaime Hayon, Ron Arad, and nendo. With more than 2,300 objects dating from 1640 to the present, the collection explores the intersections between art, craft, and design; handcraft and technology; and innovation and making. European Art Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil by Claude Monet, High Museum of Art

Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil by Claude Monet, High Museum of Art

This collection represents seven centuries of artistic achievement throughout Europe. The High’s holdings of more than 1,000 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper span the 1300s through the 1900s and trace the development of religion, scientific discovery, and social change through the lens of the continent’s visual culture. In 1958, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation donated what became the core of the High’s European art collection. The Kress Collection includes Giovanni Bellini’s ''Madonna and Child'', Vittore Carpaccio’s ''Prudence'' and ''Temperance'', and other artworks from Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Since then, the High’s European collection has grown to represent most major art movements and styles, exemplified by paintings and sculptures of such masters as Nicolas Tournier, Guercino (''Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well''), Jan Breughel the Elder, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (''The Burial of Atala''), Camille Corot, Jean-Joseph Carriès (''Sleeping Faun''), and Auguste Rodin (''Eternal Spring''). Today, the European collection is especially rich in French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, many of which came as a gift in 2019 from Atlanta collectors Doris and Shouky Shaheen. The holdings include Claude Monet’s 1873 ''Autumn of the Seine''; ''Argenteuil'', a rare seascape by Frédéric Bazille, and Henri Matisse’s ''Woman Seated at the Piano'', as well as paintings by Eugène Boudin, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Fantin-Latour, Émile Bernard, Édouard Vuillard, and others. The High’s significant European print holdings, displayed on a rotating basis, include work ranging from Albrecht Dürer’s sixteenth-century engravings to a complete edition of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s ''Elles'' portfolio of lithographs. Folk and Self-Taught Art The High Museum began collecting the work of living self-taught artists in 1975 and was the first general interest museum to establish a dedicated department for folk and self-taught art in 1994. This collection is especially rich in artworks by Southern and African American artists and features the largest groups of work by Bill Traylor, Howard Finster, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Thornton Dial held by any museum. Although the majority of these artists could be identified as American or contemporary, the High refers to them as “folk,” which underscores their status as artists of the people, or “self-taught,” to emphasize that they were not formally trained. Modern and Contemporary Art Modern and contemporary art at the High traces the development of innovative visual languages since 1945 that have influenced how people perceive, understand, and interpret the world, its histories, and human experience. Modern and contemporary art at the High Museum includes outstanding examples of work by seminal artists, those just entering the canon, and emerging artists. The collection prominently features multiple works by artists such as Radcliffe Bailey, Alex Katz, and Ellsworth Kelly as well as a growing collection of significant individual works by artists including Michaël Borremans, Alfredo Jaar, Anish Kapoor, KAWS, Julie Mehretu, Judy Pfaff, Sarah Sze, and Kara Walker, with a special focus on work by African American artists. Photography The High began collecting photographs in the early 1970s, making it among the earliest museums to commit to the medium. Today, the photography department is one of the nation’s leading programs and, with some 7,500 prints, comprises the Museum’s largest collection. These holdings encompass work from around the world made by diverse practitioners, from artists, to entrepreneurs, to journalists, to scientists. Spanning the very beginnings of the medium in the 1840s to the present, the High’s collection has particular strengths in American modernist and documentary traditions from the mid-twentieth century as well as current contemporary trends. The photography collection maintains a strong base of pictures related to the American South and situates this work within a global context that is both regionally relevant and internationally significant. The High owns one of the largest collections of photographs of the civil rights movement and some of the country’s strongest monographic collections of photographs by Eugene Atget, Dawoud Bey, Isla Bing, Wynn Bullock, Lucinda Bunnen, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Walker Evans, Leonard Freed, Evelyn Hofer, Clarence John Laughlin, Abelardo Morell, and Peter Sekaer. The collection also gives special attention to pictures made in and of the South, serving as the largest and most significant repository representing the region's important contributions to the history of photography. Since 1996, the High's distinctive "Picturing the South" initiative has commissioned established and emerging photographers to produce work inspired by the area's geographical and cultural landscape. Past participants include Sally Mann, Dawoud Bey, Emmet Gowin, Alex Webb, Alec Soth, Richard Misrach, Kael Alford and Debbie Fleming Caffery, whose commissions have all been added to the High's permanent collection.

Gallery

Exhibitions

Changing exhibitions at the High place emphasis upon the Museum’s collections across all of its curatorial departments and include nationally touring projects as well as international collaborations with other museums. Recent touring exhibitions organized by the High include key projects from its important holdings of folk and self-taught art, photography, and decorative arts and design, among other areas. Other projects hosted at the High included the popular

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes ...

: Infinity Mirrors as well as

Virgil Abloh Virgil Abloh (; September 30, 1980 – November 28, 2021) was an American fashion designer and entrepreneur. He was the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection beginning in 2018, and was given increased creative responsibilitie ...

: “Figures of Speech.” Earlier global partnerships with other museums included that with the

and with the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the

Opificio delle pietre dure The Opificio delle pietre dure, literally meaning ''Workshop of semi-precious stones'', is a public institute of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage based in Florence. It is a global leader in the field of art restoration and provides teachi ...

in Florence. In 2008, the museum secured a US$18 million deal for Louvre Atlanta, a three-year revolving loan of art from the

Musée du Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

in Paris. The museum is also a Smithsonian Institution Affiliate. Annie Leibovitz High Museum of Art

Selected exhibitions

* October 2007 – September 2008: ''

Atlanta: The Louvre and the Ancient World'' * October 2007 – May 2008: ''

Atlanta: Eye of Josephine'' * December 2007 – August 2008: ''Street Life: American Photographs form the 1960s and 70s'' * May 2008 – August 2008: ''Young Americans: Photographs by Sheila Pree Bright'' * June 2008 – September 2008: ''

Atlanta:

Houdon Jean-Antoine Houdon (; 20 March 1741 – 15 July 1828) was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment. Houdon's subjects included De ...

at the

: Masterworks of the Enlightenment'' * June 2008 – October 2008: ''Road to Freedom: Photographs from the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

, 1956–1968'' * June 2008 – October 2008: ''After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy'' * November 2008: ''The First Emperor: China's

Terracotta Army The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in ...

'' * 2008: ''Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

'' * 2008: ''

Atlanta: The

and the Masterpiece'' * 2008: ''The Treasure of Ulysses Davis'' * April 2009: ''Anthony Ames, Architect: Residential Landscapes'' * October 2009 – February 2010: ''

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

: The Hand of the Genius'' * 2009: ''

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Water Lilies ''Water Lilies'' (or ''Nymphéas'', ) is a Serial imagery, series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionism, Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict his Fondation Monet in Giverny, flower garden at Fond ...

" Exhibit'' * March 2010 – June 2010: ''The Allure of the Automobile'' * August 2010 – January 2011: '' Dali: The Late Work'' * October 2011 – April 2012: ''Picasso to Warhol'' – modern art including

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Pollock Pollock or pollack (pronounced ) is the common name used for either of the two species of North Atlantic marine fish in the genus ''Pollachius''. ''Pollachius pollachius'' is referred to as pollock in North America, Ireland and the United Kingd ...

Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

, Mondrian, and

Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

. * June 2012 – September 2012: ''Picturing the South'' – photographs by

Martin Parr Martin Parr (born 23 May 1952) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in p ...

, Kael Alford, and Shane Lavalette * February 2013 – May 2013: ''Frida and Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting'' – featuring art from

Frida Kahlo Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, ...

and

Diego Rivera Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...

* June 2013 – September 2013: '' The Girl with the Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the

Mauritshuis The Mauritshuis (; en, Maurice House) is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer ...

'' – featuring art from

Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

and

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

* November 2013 – January 2014: ''The Art of the

Tuileries Garden The Tuileries Garden (french: Jardin des Tuileries, ) is a public garden located between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in ...

'' * November 2013 – April 2014: ''Go West! Art of the

American Frontier The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of United States territorial acquisitions, American expansion in mainland North Amer ...

'' * February 2014 – May 2014: ''

Abelardo Morell Abelardo Morell (born 1948, Havana, Cuba) is a contemporary artist widely known for turning rooms into camera obscuras and then capturing the marriage of interior and exterior in large format photographs. He is also known for his 'tent-camera,' a ...

: The Universe Next Door'' * May 2014 – September 2014: ''Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas'' * July 2014 – November 2014: ''Mi Casa, Your Casa'' * October 2014 – January 2015: '' Cezanne and the Modern'' * November 2014 – June 2015: ''

Gordon Parks Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particu ...

: Segregation Story'' * February 2015 – May 2015: ''Imagining New Worlds:

Wifredo Lam Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (; December 8, 1902 – September 11, 1982), better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Inspired by and in conta ...

José Parlá José Parlá (born 1973 in Miami, Florida), is a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist whose work has been described as "lying between the boundary of abstraction and calligraphy." Parlá is publicly known for his permanent installations of large- ...

and

Fahamu Pecou Fahamu Pecou (born June 25, 1975) is an American painter and scholar. He is known for producing works that combine aspects of Fine art and Hip-hop. Most of his works engage representations of black masculinity and identity. Early life and educa ...

'' * April 2015 – November 2015: ''Los Trompos'' * May 2015 – January 2016: ''Seriously Silly! The art & whimsy of

Mo Willems Mo Willems (born February 11, 1968) is an American writer, animator, voice actor, and children's book author. His work includes creating the animated television series ''Sheep in the Big City'' for Cartoon Network, working on ''Sesame Street'' ...

'' * June 2015 – September 2015: ''

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...

, This Is Now'' * July 2015 – October 2015: ''Sprawl! Drawing Outside the Lines'' * October 2015 – January 2016: ''Habsburg Splendor: Masterpieces from Vienna's Imperial Collections'' * November 2015 – June 2016: ''

Iris van Herpen Iris van Herpen (born June 5, 1984) is a Dutch fashion designer known for fusing technology with traditional haute couture craftsmanship. Van Herpen opened her own label ''Iris van Herpen'' in 2007. In 2011, the Dutch designer became a guest-mem ...

: Transforming Fashion'' * February 2016 – August 2016: ''

Vik Muniz Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional ma ...

'' * March 2016 – January 2017: ''I See a Story: The Art of

Eric Carle Eric Carle (June 25, 1929 – May 23, 2021) was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. His picture book ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar'', first published in 1969, has been translated into more than 66 languages and sold ...

'' * June 2016 – August 2016: ''The Rise of Sneaker Culture'' * June 2016 – September 2016: ''

Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...

: Depth of Field'' * June 2016 – November 2016: ''Tiovivo: Whimsical Sculptures by Jaime Hayon'' * October 2016 – January 2017: ''Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett'' * October 2016 – January 2017: ''

Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...

: Nature & Politics'' * February 2017 – May 2017: ''Cross Country: The Power of Place in American Art, 1915−1950'' *November 2016 – July 2017: ''A Conspiracy of Icons: The Art of

Donald Locke Donald Cuthbert Locke (17 September 1930 – 6 December 2010) was a Guyanese artist who created drawings, paintings and sculptures in a variety of media. He studied in the United Kingdom, and worked in Guyana and the United Kingdom before movin ...

'' *March 2017 – May 2017: ''

Daniel Arsham Daniel Arsham (born 1980) is an American artist. He lives and works in New York City. Early life and education Born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Miami, Florida, Arsham was 12 when Hurricane Andrew destroyed his childhood home. This trau ...

: Hourglass'' *March 2017 – June 2017: ''The Spirit of the Place: Photographs by

Jack Leigh John David Leigh II (November 8, 1948 – May 19, 2004) was an American photographer and author, known for the cover photograph on John Berendt's novel ''Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil''. The photograph featured the ''Bird Girl'' statu ...

'' *April 2017 – January 2018: ''Painter and Poet: The Wonderful World of

Ashley Bryan Ashley Frederick Bryan (July 13, 1923February 4, 2022) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Most of his subjects are from the African-American experience. He was U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 ...

'' *June 2017 – October 2017: ''Technicolor'' *June 2017 – October 2017: '' Paul Graham: The Whiteness of the Whale'' *June 2017 – October 2017: ''Universal and Sublime: The Vessels of Magdalene Odundo'' *June 2017 – November 2017: ''Merry Go Zoo'' *June 2017 – December 2017: ''

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation'' *September 2017 – April 2019: ''

Amy Elkins Amy Elkins (born 1979) is an American photographer based in California. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her photographs are formal portraits, through which she captures intimacy ...

: Black Is the Day, Black Is the Night'' *October 2017 – January 2018: ''Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design'' *November 2017 – April 2018: ''“A Fire That No Water Could Put Out”: Civil Rights Photography'' *November 2017 – March 2018: ''Al Taylor, What Are You Looking At?'' *February 2018 – May 2018: '' Joris Laarman Lab: Design In the Digital Age'' *March 2018 – June 2018: ''

Mark Steinmetz Mark Christopher Steinmetz (born 1961) is an American photographer. He makes black and white photographs "of ordinary people in the ordinary landscapes they inhabit". Steinmetz's work was shown in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, ...

: Terminus'' *June 2018 – September 2018: ''

Winnie-The-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character w ...

: Exploring a Classic'' *June 2018 – September 2018: ''Outliers and American Vanguard Art'' *June 2018 – October 2018: ''Sonic Playground: Yuri Suzuki'' *September 2018 – February 2019: ''With Drawn Arms:

Glenn Kaino Glenn Akira Kaino (born 1972 in Los Angeles) is an American conceptual artist based in Los Angeles. Early life, education and artistic training Kaino grew up in Cerritos and East Los Angeles; he is fourth-generation Japanese-American. He att ...

and

Tommie Smith Tommie C. Smith (born June 6, 1944) is an American former track and field, track and field athlete and former wide receiver in the American Football League. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Smith, aged 24, won the 200-meter sprint finals and gold me ...

'' *October 2018 – April 2018: ''

William Christenberry William Andrew Christenberry Jr. (November 5, 1936 – November 28, 2016) was an American photographer, painter, sculptor, and teacher who drew inspiration from his childhood in Hale County, Alabama. Christenberry focused extensively on architec ...

: Time & Texture'' *November 2018 – February 2019: ''

: Infinity Mirrors'' *October 2018 – April 2019: ''Look Again: 45 Years of Collecting Photography'' *October 2018 – August 2019: ''Hand to Hand: Southern Craft of the 19th Century'' *March 2019 – May 2019: ''Way Out There: The Art of Southern Backroads'' *April 2019 – July 2019: ''European Masterworks:

The Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, ...

'' *May 2019 – November 2019: ''Strange Light: The Photography of

'' *June 2019 – September 2019: ''The Pursuit of Everything:

Maira Kalman Maira Kalman is an American artist, illustrator, writer, and designer known for her painting and writing about the human condition. She is the author and illustrator of over 30 books for adults and children and her work is exhibited in museums a ...

’s Books for Children'' *June 2019 – September 20119: ''Of Origins and Belonging, Drawn from Atlanta'' *July 2019 – September 2019: ''Supple Means of Connection'' *September 2019 – February 2020: ''"Something Over Something Else:

Romare Bearden Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...

's Profile Series'' *October 2019 – December 2019: ''

Sally Mann Sally Mann HonFRPS (born Sally Turner Munger; May 1, 1951) is an American photographer who has made large format black and white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. Early life and e ...

: A Thousand Crossings'' *October 2019 – March 2020: ''Fine Lines: American Works on Paper'' *November 2019 – March 2020: ''

: "Figures of Speech"'' *November 2019 – May 2020: ''Our Strange New Land: Photographs by Alex Harris'' *February 2020 – July 2020: ''The Plot Thickens: Storytelling in European Print Series'' *February 2020 – August 2020: ''

Paa Joe Paa Joe (with family name Joseph Tetteh-Ashong) is a Ghanaian figurative palanquin and fantasy coffin artist born 1947 at Akwapim in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Paa Joe is considered one of the most important Ghanaian coffin or abebuu adekai (“p ...

: Gates of No Return'' *July 2020 – February 2021: ''Murmuration'' *August 2020 – November 2020: ''Picture the Dream: The Story of the

through Children's Books'' *October 2020 – January 2021: ''

Julie Mehretu Julie Mehretu (born November 28, 1970) is an Ethiopian American contemporary visual artist, known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale. Her paintings, drawings, and prints depict the cumulative effects of urban ...

'' *November 2020 – March 2021: ''

Dawoud Bey Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle; November 25, 1953) is an American photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits, including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other ...

: An American Project'' *December 2020 – April 2021: ''Bestowing Beauty: Masterpieces from Persian Lands'' *February 2021 – May 2021: ''

David Driskell David C. Driskell (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020) was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world� ...

: Icons of Nature and History'' *March 2021 – May 2021: '' Ragnar Kjartannsson: The Visitors'' *April 2021 – August 2021: ''Underexposed: Women Photographers from the Collection'' *April 2021 – August 2021: ''Our Good Earth: Rural Life and American Art'' *June 2021 – September 2021: '' Calder-

'' *July 2021 – September 2021: ''Electrifying Design: A Century of Lighting'' *July 2021 – November 2021: ''Outside the Lines'' *August 2021 – December 2021: ''Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America'' *September 2021 – January 2022: ''Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe'' *November 2021 – February 2022: ''Picturing the South: 25 Years'' *December 2021 – March 2022: ''

KAWS Brian Donnelly (born November 4, 1974), known professionally as Kaws (stylized as KAWS), is an American artist and designer. His work includes repeated use of a cast of figurative characters and motifs, some dating back to the beginning of his c ...

Prints'' *December 2021 – April 2022: ''Disrupting Design: Modern Posters, 1900-1940'' *January 2022 – March 2022: ''The Obama Portraits Tour'' *February 2022 – May 2022: ''

André Kertész André Kertész (; 2 July 1894 – 28 September 1985), born Andor Kertész, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition (visual arts), composition and the photo essay. In the early y ...

: Postcards from Paris'' *March 2022 – August 2022: ''What Is Left Unspoken, Love'' *April 2022 – August 2022: ''

Oliver Jeffers Oliver Brendan Jeffers (born 1977) is a Northern Irish artist, illustrator and writer who now lives and works in Brooklyn. He went to the integrated secondary school Hazelwood College, then graduated from the University of Ulster in 2001. ...

: 15 Years of Picturing Books'' *October 2022 — January 2023: ''

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Management

From 1963, Gudmund Vigtel led the High as director for 28 years, overseeing its transformation from a regional institution housed in a simple brick building into one of the nation's most successful art museums, and shepherding its move to its building designed by

. The Meier building, now the Stent Family Wing, was termed Director Gudmund Vigtel's "crowning achievement" by Michael Shapiro, a later director. During Vigtel's tenure from 1963-1991, the size of the museum's permanent collection tripled, endowment and trust funds of more than $15 million were established, the operating budget increased from $60,000 to $9 million and the staff expanded from four to 150. Ned Rifkin served as the museum's director between 1991 and 2000. During the tenure of director Michael E. Shapiro between 2000 and 2014, the museum nearly doubled the number of works in its permanent collection, acquiring important paintings by 19th and 20th century and contemporary artists. The High raised nearly $230 million during that time, increasing its endowment by nearly 30 percent and building an acquisition fund of nearly $20 million. In July 2015, the High Museum of Art announced that it had selected Randall Suffolk to be its new director. Suffolk began his tenure in November 2015. Under Suffolk's leadership, the High’s audience diversity increased: nonwhite visitorship more than tripled from 2015 to 2020, and about 60 percent of the High's audience as of 2022 is under the age of 35, not counting school groups.

Appearances in film and television

The High has been featured as a location in several popular films and television shows, including '' The Resident'' (as Chastain Park Memorial Hospital), '' What to Expect When You're Expecting'', ''

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ''The Falcon and the Winter Soldier'' is an American television miniseries created by Malcolm Spellman for the streaming service Disney+, based on Marvel Comics featuring the characters Sam Wilson / Falcon and Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier. ...

'' (as the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum), '' Manhunter'' (as Lecktor's prison), ''

Black Panther A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (''Panthera pardus'') and the jaguar (''Panthera onca''). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been d ...

'' (as the Museum of Great Britain), '' The Divergent Series: Insurgent'', ''

Red Band Society ''Red Band Society'' is an American teen medical comedy-drama television series, developed by Margaret Nagle, that aired on Fox for the 2014–15 American television season. The series premiered on September 17, 2014. Based on the Catalan d ...

'', and '' Allegiant'' (as the former Erudite Headquarters).

References

External links

*
High Museum of Art
within

Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world. It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...

Atlanta Art Association Film from 1962
* {{Authority control Museums in Atlanta Midtown Atlanta Decorative arts museums in the United States Folk art museums and galleries in Georgia (U.S. state) Museums of American art Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Smithsonian Institution affiliates Art museums established in 1905 1905 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Buildings and structures completed in 1905 Richard Meier buildings Renzo Piano buildings African art museums in the United States