Highlights Tour
Explore the galleries to discover highlights of the High!
Physic Garden
Molly Hatch is an artist and designer who creates ceramic works like Physic Garden but also works in painting, printmaking, and drawing. Hatch often uses historical images, like prints and drawings, for inspiration for the design of her ceramic installations, which she calls “plate paintings.” Physic Garden was created by Hatch in 2014, specifically for the High Museum. The artist hand-painted 465 individual plates after finding her inspiration for the installation in two plates from 1755 in the High’s galleries. The flowers painted on those eighteenth-century plates were inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden, a real garden that houses many medicinal plants.
Look closely at Hatch’s Physic Garden and the plates that inspired the work. Hatch combined the Chelsea plates and moved elements around to create a new composition. Can you find the insects from the plates in the artist’s work? What about the fruit, and the flowers? Imagine going to the Chelsea Physic Garden. What do you think the garden would smell like? What would it sound like?
The Cliffs of Pourville, Rough Sea (Falaises de Pourville, mer agitée)
Artist Claude Monet is known as one of the founders of the Impressionist movement. The Impressionist style of art is characterized by broad strokes of intense color. Many Impressionists, including Monet, painted en plein air, meaning they worked outside in front of the scene they were painting. Monet often painted the same scenes over and over to see how the weather and time of day would change his view.
Look closely at Cliffs of Pourville, Rough Sea. How do you think it would feel to be in this painting? Would you feel hot or cold, calm or excited? Why?
The title of the painting, Falaises de Pourville, mer agitée, means “Cliffs of Pourville, rough sea.” Knowing the title, does that change what you think about the painting?
You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers
Tejo Remy is a contemporary designer and artist, creating decorative art objects including furniture, wallpaper, and works such as You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers.
Decorative art explores the merging of function and aesthetics through form, material, process, place, and intent; sometimes, decorative artworks are meant to be used, other times they are for display only, and often, they can be for both.
Remy created multiple versions of You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers at different museums. For each of the works, Remy used drawers that people donated from the areas surrounding the museums. For the work at the High, the Museum sent out a statewide call for drawers; Remy then came to the Museum to piece together twenty of the most compelling drawers that were submitted.
To the artist, each drawer holds the memories of the original owners.
Look closely at You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory Chest of Drawers. What do the drawers have in common? How are they different?
Taago
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works in Nsukka, Nigeria. He is known for creating large metal sculptures known as “bottle-top installations,” but he has also created artworks using clay, wood, and other found objects. In works like Taago, the artist creates what he calls “metal-cloth.” Look closely at Taago. What about it reminds you of cloth or fabric?
For Taago, El Anatsui connected recycled aluminum bottle tops to create the sculpture, which is inspired by African strip-weaving textiles such as kente cloths. Master weavers in West Africa, including El Anatsui’s father, have made kente cloths for more than a thousand years.
Red Canna
Georgia O’Keeffe often found inspiration in nature and is well known for her close-up paintings of flowers. She made Red Canna after seeing red canna lilies when she was on vacation in New York. Does this canna lily look like any flower you have seen before? What types of flowers have you seen in nature? O’Keeffe was attracted to flowers’ bright, bold colors. How many colors can you find in this painting?
House III
Artist Roy Lichtenstein created this smaller-than-life house, House III, to play with optical illusions—it’s a trick of the eye! Move slowly around the house to see how your view shifts. Start far away from the piece and move from side to side. Do you notice how the house seems to change shape? Does House III look like any house you’ve seen before?
