ATLANTA, Aug. 21, 2023 — The High Museum of Art presents a rotating schedule of exhibitions throughout the year. Below is a list of current and upcoming exhibitions as of Aug. 21, 2023. Note: The exhibition schedule is subject to change. Please contact the High’s press office or visit high.org for more information or to confirm details.
Upcoming Exhibitions
“In the City of Light: Paris, 1850-1920”
Sept. 1-Dec. 31, 2023
This exhibition serves as an illustrated guide through the architecture, people and culture of the dynamic, visionary French capital during the latter half of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Théophile Steinlen, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Vuillard and other artists explored Parisian life through their subjective lenses, comprising a kaleidoscope of impressions featuring the luxuries and hardships of city life, both public and private. As they immortalized the sights of Notre Dame, dancers at the Folies Bergère and the promenading bourgeoisie of the boulevards, they simultaneously captured bustling street markets of the working classes, absinthe drinkers in cafés, and the pursuits of beggars, buskers and people at work. Through prints, drawings, photographs and sculpture from the High’s collection and significant loans from local private collections, this exhibition serves as an intimate exploration of the paradigmatic modern metropolis that is the City of Light. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845”
Sept. 15, 2023-Jan. 14, 2024
As the first major survey of Southern photography in 25 years, this exhibition will examine that complex history and reveal the South’s critical impact on the evolution of the medium, posing timely questions about American culture and character. Featuring many works from the High’s extensive collection, the exhibition will include photographs of the American Civil War, which transformed the practice of photography across the nation and established visual codes for articulating national identity and expressing collective trauma. Photographs from the 1930s-1950s, featuring many created for the Farm Security Administration, will demonstrate how that era defined a new kind of documentary aesthetic that dominated American photography for decades and included jarring and unsettling pictures that exposed economic and racial disparities. Drawn from the High’s unparalleled collection of civil rights-era photography, the exhibition will show how photographs of the movement in the decade that followed galvanized the nation with raw depictions of violence and the struggle for justice. Contemporary photography featured in the exhibition will demonstrate how photographers working today continue to explore Southern history and themes to grasp American identity. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature”
Oct. 13, 2023-Jan. 7, 2024
This playful, interactive exhibition invites visitors of all ages to rediscover one of the most renowned authors of children’s fiction in the 20th century, exploring the places and animals that inspired Beatrix Potter’s beloved stories including “The Tale of Peter Rabbit™,” “The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle” and “The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.” Through more than 125 personal objects — including sketches, watercolors, rarely seen letters, coded diaries, commercial merchandise, paintings and experimental books — the exhibition will also examine Potter’s life as a strong-minded, imaginative businessperson, natural scientist, farmer and conservationist, a legacy that extends to the present. This exhibition is organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other”
Oct. 27, 2023-Feb. 18, 2024
For nearly 30 years, fiber artist Sonya Clark’s work has explored the histories and legacies of racism and oppression in America and the potential of a collective approach to questions of equality for the future. “We Are Each Other” will be the first survey of the artist’s work in Atlanta, New York City and Detroit and will bring together the artist’s largest, community-centered and participatory projects, which will be activated with each city’s respective communities. The exhibition will feature projects including the additive, room-sized installation “The Beaded Prayers Project” (1998-ongoing), inspired by African amulet traditions; “The Hair Craft Project” (2014), which pairs photography and fiber art, documenting the work of Black hairdressers; and the “Monumental Cloth” series (2019), which recreates at massive scale the flag of truce used to help broker the end of the Civil War. In her work, Clark intertwines craft and community and incorporates handwork in her projects to promote new collective encounters across racial, gender and socioeconomic lines and to address difficult questions of exclusion in American society, as part of her commitment to one of the most pressing issues of our day — equality and the difficult work we all must do to realize it. This exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina”
Feb. 16-May 12, 2024
The High will be the exclusive Southeast venue for this landmark exhibition featuring nearly 60 ceramic objects created by enslaved African Americans in Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before the Civil War. Considered through the lens of current scholarship in the fields of history, literature, anthropology, material culture, diaspora and African American studies, these 19th-century vessels testify to the lived experiences, artistic agency and material knowledge of those who created them. The works include monumental storage jars by literate potter and poet Dave (later recorded as David Drake, ca. 1800-1870) and rare examples of utilitarian wares and face vessels by unrecorded makers, including a ca. 1840 water cooler jug from the High’s collection. “Hear Me Now” will also link the past to the present with work by leading contemporary Black artists who have responded to or whose practice connects with the Edgefield story, including Theaster Gates, Simone Leigh and Woody De Othello. This exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“Truth Told Slant”
March 1-Aug. 11, 2024
This exhibition will feature the work of Rose Marie Cromwell, Jill Frank, Tommy Kha, Zora J Murff and Kristine Potter, five emerging photographers who take unique approaches to documentary photography that challenge the principles of observing the contemporary world. The more than 75 works in the exhibition, including several from the High’s collection, exemplify a recent shift in how photographers have taken up the challenge of making meaningful images from the world around them in a lyrical way, rather than utilizing the traditional approach of a dispassionate observer. These artists consider issues that documentary photographers have grappled with for decades and that remain pertinent to contemporary American life: race and inequality; identity and sexual orientation; immigration and globalization; youth and coming of age; climate change and environmental justice; and the uncanny pervasiveness of violence. There are overlaps and intersections of these topics within each body of work as the artists address the pulse of the moment while self-consciously skirting the direct and detached methods of traditional documentary photography. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
“Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
April 19-July 14, 2024
In the 17th century, Dutch merchants joined maritime trade networks stretching from Asia to the Americas and Africa. This unprecedented movement of goods, ideas, and people — both free and enslaved — gave rise to the first age of globalization, and the art of this period continues to be greatly admired. This exhibition brings together paintings — still lifes, portraits, seascapes, landscapes, architectural views and genre scenes — as well as prints, maps and decorative arts spanning the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The more than 100 works featured, by the period’s leading artists including Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Willem Kalf and Rachel Ruysch, are presented through the lens of global exchange. These artworks show how Dutch dominance in international commerce transformed life in the Netherlands and created an extraordinary cultural flourishing. The exhibition emphasizes artistic achievement while encouraging visitors to consider the human costs of global expansion. By addressing these complex histories through up-to-date scholarship, the exhibition contextualizes 17th-century Dutch art in a fresh and compelling way. Many of the works are recent gifts or loans from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, whose donations have elevated the Dutch holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to among the finest in the world. This exhibition is organized in partnership with the Center for Netherlandish Art (CNA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Through an expansive library, a residency fellowship program, and an active slate of public and academic programs, the CNA shares Dutch and Flemish art with wide audiences in Boston and beyond; stimulates multidisciplinary research and object-based learning; nurtures future generations of scholars and curators in the field; and expands public appreciation of Netherlandish art — especially works from the 17th century.
Currently on View
“Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
Through Sept. 3, 2023
For more than 3,000 years, a series of kingdoms flourished along the Nile Valley south of ancient Egypt in the Nubian Desert of modern-day Sudan. This exhibition features more than 200 masterworks drawn from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s vast holdings, now the largest and most comprehensive collection of ancient Nubian art and material culture outside of Africa. Including skillfully crafted pottery, gold and silver amulets, jewelry, and funerary figurines, among other works, the exhibition highlights the skill, artistry and innovation of Nubian makers and reflects the wealth and power of their kings and queens, who once controlled one of the largest empires of the ancient world. The exhibition also explores how historical narratives have evolved over time, now reflecting recent scholarship that has proved ancient Nubia’s position as an autonomous nation-state separate from ancient Egypt, with its own sophisticated systems of governance, trade and commerce punctuated by innovations in art, architecture and science. This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller”
Through Sept. 17, 2023
This exhibition features one of the most important collections of samurai armor outside of Japan. Through a dazzling array of more than 150 helmets, swords and other objects spanning almost nine centuries, including nearly 20 complete sets of armor, the exhibition illuminates the exceptionally high level of design and craft dedicated to these elaborate instruments of ceremony and combat and reveals the culture, lifestyle and artistic legacy associated with the samurai warrior in Japanese society. The High is the first museum in the Southeastern United States to present this exhibition, which has traveled to cities around the world. This exhibition is organized by The Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
About the High Museum of Art
Located in the heart of Atlanta, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs. Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 19,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from prehistory through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper. The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process. For more information about the High, visit www.high.org.
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