High Museum of Art

October 19, 2021

Sean McMeen

The High Museum of Art is an art museum located in Atlanta, Georgia. The High is a section of the Woodruff Arts Center and is located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts area. It received 509,000 visits in 2010, ranking it 95th among international art museums.

History

In 1981, the Woodruff Arts Center and the High Museum of Art agreed to collaborate on the establishment of a world-class institution of art and education. Atlanta Public Schools chose the Woodruff Arts Center as the site for a new professional arts high school on the High Museum of Art campus in 1988. In 1990, the museum appointed a professional head of museum studies and officially opened in 1993.

The High Museum of Art Village, which opened in 2004, is a campus of shopping, restaurants, a café, and exhibition spaces located just across the street from the museum and connected through an enclosed pedestrian bridge.

The Woodruff Arts Center was renamed the High Museum of Art in June 2014.

The Collections

The High's collection contains works by twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists, as well as American painting from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries. The museum houses a sizable collection of works by American Impressionists. Additionally, it has a significant collection of nineteenth-century American paintings, including some of the Hudson River School. Additionally, it houses an American sculpture collection, with an emphasis on Georgia and local marble.

Sargent Peale, John Hoyland, Henry Lee Skipper, and John Ross are among the Georgia painters represented in the museum's collection.

Additionally, the High Museum of Art houses a collection of almost 4,000 works by George Evans. This collection contains his well-known picture of Sallie Gardner, as well as pieces by many other painters.

How to Get to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta?

The design of the High Museum of Art's second-largest gallery is open to the public by appointment only on the first floor of the West Hall, which includes the collection of George Margulies, who donated a multi-million dollar collection to the museum.