People

Randall Suffolk is the director of the High Museum of Art. Since joining the High in 2015, he has led a significant transformation of the museum’s relationship with the city of Atlanta, championing an institutional approach centered on community engagement, accessibility, and inclusion. Under his leadership, the High has diversified its exhibitions and collection, expanded programming for families and younger audiences, and strengthened ties with community organizations. The museum’s visitors who identify as BIPOC have grown in number from fifteen percent in 2015 to fifty-five percent in 2025. As of 2026, nearly eighty percent of visitors are under age fifty-five, and membership has roughly doubled since 2021. 

Suffolk is leading the High through its centennial year, an institution-wide celebration reflecting on the museum’s history and legacy while laying the groundwork for the next century. Centennial initiatives include sweeping reinstallations of the American and African art galleries, significant new acquisitions that build on the more than four thousand works that have entered the museum’s collection during Suffolk’s tenure, expanded partnerships and programming across Atlanta, and the museum’s first new brand identity since 2003. 

Prior to joining the High, Suffolk served as director of Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his community-focused institutional strategy drove increases in membership and attendance and significantly diversified the museum’s audience. This approach was recognized in a book published by the American Alliance of Museums as one of six national models of community engagement. From 1999 to 2007, he served as director of The Hyde Collection Art Museum in Glens Falls, New York. 

Suffolk has curated more than twenty-five exhibitions and regularly serves as a juror, panelist, and guest lecturer within the arts and culture industry. He holds master’s degrees in art history from Bryn Mawr College and in higher education administration from Columbia University and a bachelor of arts degree from Connecticut College, where he sits on the board. Suffolk is also a board member of Williamstown + Atlanta Art Conservation Center. He was named one of The Observer’s Most Influential People in Art in 2024 and has been recognized among The Atlantan’s 25 Most Influential People and Atlanta Magazine’s Atlanta 500: Our City’s Most Powerful Leaders.