ATLANTA, Feb. 28, 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 Feb. 28, 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
“Evelyn Hofer: Eyes on the City”
March 24-Aug. 13, 2023
Evelyn Hofer (American, born Germany, 1922; active New York; died Mexico, 2009) was a highly innovative photographer whose prolific career spanned five decades. Despite her extraordinary output, she was underrecognized during her lifetime and was notably referred to by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer as “the most famous unknown photographer in America.” She made her greatest impact through a series of photobooks, published throughout the 1960s, devoted to European and American cities, including Florence, London, New York, Washington, D.C., and Dublin, as well as a book focused on the country of Spain. Comprising more than 100 vintage prints in both black and white and color, “Eyes on the City,” the artist’s first major museum exhibition in the United States in over 50 years, is organized around these publications. The photographs to be featured combine landscapes and architectural views with portraiture, conveying the unique character and personality of these urban capitals during a period of intense structural, social and economic transformations after World War II. This exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“George Voronovsky: Memoryscapes”
March 24-Aug. 13, 2023
This exhibition marks the first major museum presentation of work by the late Ukrainian American artist George Voronosky. Born in Kiev in 1903, Voronovsky immigrated to the United States after World War II and began working in the rail industry in Philadelphia. He continued to work primarily as a train car upholsterer and followed his occupation south, ultimately settling in Miami, where he turned his room in Miami’s Colony Hotel into an art refuge and lived there until his death in 1982. His paradisaical art installation included carved Styrofoam sculptures, cut tin cans and glorious paintings on cardboard and canvas, which melded his old-world memories and his neon present in Miami Beach. This exhibition will showcase approximately 40 of his paintings alongside sculpture he created from materials discarded along the local beaches he frequented. His work has been preserved by Florida-based collector and photographer Gary Monroe, whose photos of the artist and his vibrant art environment will also be included in the exhibition. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross”
April 7-July 30, 2023
This is the first solo exhibition at an American museum for sculptor and printmaker Bruce Onobrakpeya (born 1932), one of the fathers of Nigerian modernism and a founding member of the Zaria Art Society, an art collective that developed the “natural synthesis” aesthetic that came to define early postcolonial Nigerian art. “The Mask and the Cross” describes the artist’s creative phase from 1967 through 1978, during which he created numerous works marrying Nigerian tradition, folklore and cosmology with Catholic motifs and stories from the Bible. This period began with the creation of a series commissioned by the Catholic Church titled “Fourteen Stations of the Cross,” which depicts scenes from the last earthly day of Jesus Christ. Onobrakpeya portrays Biblical characters as Nigerian and reimagines Biblical scenes in Nigerian settings. Grounded in the High’s own edition of Onobrakpeya’s “Fourteen Stations of the Cross” prints, “The Mask and the Cross” will showcase other works from this period and examples from later periods that feature themes of religious hybridity and multiplicity, subjects he has returned to throughout his 60-year career. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“HAPPY JOYLANTA”
May 14-Nov. 26, 2023
This immersive environment within a monumental celebratory canopy by designer Tanya Aquiñiga is the High’s eighth site-specific installation on the Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza, continuing the Museum’s multiyear series of inclusive and inviting commissions to activate its outdoor space and encourage community engagement. Drawing upon years of Aquiñiga’s collaborative practice, the project explores craft and its multiple connections to culture, tradition, materials, function and community. The installation’s massive canopy will comprise many layers, including custom papel picado (traditional crafts of cut tissue paper with global roots) designed by various people at workshops in Atlanta. In addition, decorations from celebratory traditions around the world, such as kites, lanterns, floral garland and disco balls, will envelop the interior of the environment and create a spectacular panoply of layered signs and symbols. Aguiñiga will also create objects for the space that probe ideas surrounding cultural intersections and hybrid identities and will feature custom-made piñatas, based on designs by several contest winners from the Atlanta region, in the installation. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
June 2-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 will feature 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 will highlight the skill, artistry and innovation of Nubian makers and reflect the wealth and power of their kings and queens, who once controlled one of the largest empires of the ancient world. The exhibition will also explore 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”
June 23-Sept. 17, 2023
This summer, the High Museum of Art will present an exhibition featuring 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 will illuminate the exceptionally high level of design and craft dedicated to these elaborate instruments of ceremony and combat and reveal 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.
“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, resulting in the 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 errand workers alike. Through prints, drawings, photographs and sculpture from the High’s collection, the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schlossberg and the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Gaynes, 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.
“A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845”
Sept. 15, 2023-Jan. 14, 2024
The South has occupied an uneasy place in the history of photography as both an example of regional exceptionalism and as the crucible from which American identity has been forged. As the first major survey of Southern photography in 25 years, this exhibition will examine that complicated 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.
“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 characters like Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Squirrel Nutkin. Through more than 100 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, shrewd and imaginative businesswoman, natural scientist, farmer and conservationist, a legacy that extends to the present. This exhibition is organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
“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 present, for the first time, the artist’s largest, multiyear 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” (1999-ongoing), inspired by African amulet traditions; “The Hair Craft Project” (2014), which pairs photography and fiber art, documenting the work of Black hairdressers; and “Monumental” (2019), which recreates at massive scale the flag of truce used to help broker the end of the Civil War. In her work, she 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 Museum of Arts and Design and Cranbrook Art Museum.
Currently on View
“Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place”
Through March 5, 2023
In the wake of several global crises, designers have responded by redefining our relationship to our homes, including interrogating the modernist trope of better living through design. “Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place” explores ideas concerning domesticity during a time of worldwide upheaval, tackling the question of how we can design interiors to enable joyful living while empowering creativity. It is the first major museum exhibition in over a decade to survey Burks’ workshop-based design practice, presenting more than 50 works from several key projects from the last 10 years. These industrial design and craft-centered projects are seen in conversation with “Shelter in Place,” a multifaceted new commission that explores the visionary possibilities of design. As an African American designer, Burks has forged a distinctive path by embracing the challenge to advocate for hand production as an innovative approach for industry. “Shelter in Place” also demonstrates Burks’ holistic approach that unites art, architecture and design while synthesizing craft, community and industry. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden”
Through April 9, 2023
This is the first posthumous exhibition at an American museum for Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922-2019), one of Iran’s most celebrated and revered visual artists, known internationally for her geometric mirror sculptures that combine the mathematical order and beauty of ancient Persian architectural motifs with the forms and patterns of hard-edged, postwar abstraction. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Farmanfarmaian’s 2007 memoir, co-authored by Zara Houshmand, which evokes the visual splendor of the artist’s mirror-mosaic sculptures. Objects on view include a selection of sculptures, drawings, textiles and collages spanning four decades, from 1974 to 2018. The exhibition was inspired by the High’s 2019 acquisition of Farmanfarmaian’s cut-mirror sculpture “Untitled (Muqarnas)” (2012) as well as her 2014 drawing “Untitled (Circles and Squares).” This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download press images here.
“Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature”
Through May 21, 2023
Co-organized by the High and the Brandywine River Museum of Art, this is the first major museum exhibition to exclusively examine the nature-based works of pioneering American modernist Joseph Stella. Though Stella is primarily recognized for his dynamic Futurist-inspired paintings of New York, particularly of the Brooklyn Bridge, he was also compelled to express the powerful connection he felt to the natural world, a subject he would pursue persistently throughout his career. “Visionary Nature” features more than 100 paintings and works on paper that reveal the complexity and spirituality that drove Stella’s nature-based works and the breadth of his artistic vision. The exhibition digs deeply into the context of the works, exploring their inspirations, sources and stylistic influences. This exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Brandywine Museum of Art.
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 18,000 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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Media contact:
Marci Tate Davis
Manager of Public Relations
404-733-4585
marci.davis@high.org