As Atlanta grew, so did its ambitions for the High.
T he museum opened its first purpose-built building in 1955, but its collection and exhibition program continued to expand. The 1962 Orly plane crash, which claimed the lives of more than 100 Atlantans connected to the city’ s arts community, devastated Atlanta but also galvanized support for what would become the Memorial Arts Center. The French government later presented Rodin’ s The Shade to Atlanta in memory of those lost.
Another turning point came in the late 1970s, when Atlanta lost the blockbuster treasures of a Tutankhamun exhibition to New Orleans because the High lacked sufficient space. Robert W. Woodruff responded with a $ 7.5 million challenge grant, inspiring a campaign with a memorable rallying cry,“ Help build a museum big enough for Atlanta.” That campaign ultimately raised more than $ 20 million.
Richard Meier’ s new building opened in 1983, its soaring, light-filled atrium immediately establishing the High as an architectural landmark. Two decades later, Renzo Piano expanded the vision again. His 2005 addition created a campus centered on a piazza and added 177,000 square feet, including galleries illuminated by 1,000 sculptural skylights designed to capture soft northern light.
Together, Meier and Piano gave Atlanta something larger than additional gallery space: a cultural landmark equal to the ambitions of the city around it.
An Atlanta Point of View
BUILDING A MUSEUM BIG ENOUGH FOR ATLANTA
Photography became another defining strength. The museum’ s Picturing the South commission series, launched in 1996, has invited photographers including Sally Mann, Dawoud Bey, Alex Webb, Richard Misrach, Alec Soth and An-My Lê to interpret the region through their own lenses.
At the same time, the High increasingly connected Atlanta with the wider art world. During the 1996 Olympics, Rings: Five Passions in World Art became a centerpiece of the city’ s cultural programming. A decade later, the three-year Louvre Atlanta partnership welcomed more than 1.3 million visitors and brought 493 treasures from the Louvre to Atlanta.
The result is a museum that can look outward to the world while remaining unmistakably connected to the place it calls home.
From a gracious Peachtree Street home to one of the Southeast’ s leading cultural institutions, the story of the High Museum of Art reveals 100 YEARS of ambition, architecture, philanthropy and an enduring belief in THE POWER
OF ART TO SHAPE A CITY.
O ver the decades, the High has developed an identity that is international in scope yet distinctly rooted in the South.
Its collections grew beyond traditional American and European holdings to establish significant strengths in African art, photography, decorative arts and design and, most distinctively, folk and self-taught art. In 1994, the High became the first general-interest museum to establish a collection and curatorship dedicated to folk and self-taught art, building on earlier acquisitions of artists such as Mattie Lou O’ Kelley, Bill Traylor and William Edmondson.