ATLANTA, Aug. 28, 2024 — 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. 28, 2024. 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
“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys”
Sept. 13, 2024-Jan. 19, 2025
The High is the exclusive venue in the Southeastern United States for the first major exhibition of the world-class art collection owned by musical and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys. The focused selection from the couple’s holdings spotlight works by multigenerational Black diasporic artists, from 20th century legends such as Nick Cave, Lorna Simpson and Barkley Hendricks, to artists of a younger generation including Deana Lawson, Amy Sherald and Ebony G. Patterson, who are expanding the legacies of those who came before them. “Giants” stands as a testament to the couple’s ethos of “collecting and preserving the culture of ourselves for ourselves, now and into the future.” Through approximately 115 objects, including 98 major artworks and noteworthy examples of their early non-art collecting interests and related ephemera, the exhibition traces the evolution of an audacious and ambitious collection and explores the ways in which the featured artists and their work have grappled with societal issues, embraced monumentality and made a palpable impact on the art canon. This exhibition is organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res images here.
“Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis”
Sept. 20, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025
This groundbreaking exhibition features a powerful body of work by Connell (American, born 1974) that reconsiders the complicated relationship between writer Charis Wilson and photographer Edward Weston from a contemporary queer and feminist perspective. Through a close examination of Wilson’s prose and Weston’s photographs, Connell enriches our understanding of the couple and weaves their stories together with her own artistic practice. Using their publications and archives as a guide, Connell and her former partner, Betsy Odom, traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work and spent time together. Along the way, Connell collaboratively made photographs of Odom that upend conventional notions of photographer and muse. She also photographed, in a raw and less idealized manner, the grand Western landscapes that Weston made iconic 75 years before. The exhibition will bring together more than 40 of Connell’s recent portrait and landscape photographs, including four from the High’s collection, with dozens of Weston’s classic figure studies and landscapes made between 1934 and 1945, one of his most productive periods and the span of his relationship with Wilson. “Pictures for Charis” will offer a new perspective about Wilson and Weston while raising important questions about gender, sexuality and relationships in the 21st century. This exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of The University of Arizona, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res images here.
“Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’”
Oct. 25, 2024-Feb. 16, 2025
Famed for her images of flowers and Southwestern landscapes, Georgia O’Keeffe spent several years of her prolific career exploring the built environment of New York City with brush in hand. The artist moved to the city’s newly built Shelton Hotel in 1924, then the tallest residential skyscraper in the world, and its soaring heights inspired a five-year period of energetic experimentation, across media, scale, subject matter, form and perspective. She created street-level compositions capturing the city’s monumental skyscrapers from below and suspended views looking down from her 30th-floor apartment. She called these works her “New Yorks” and through them investigated the dynamic potential of New York’s cityscape — the organic and the inorganic, the natural and the constructed. The High is the exclusive venue in the Southeastern United States for this exhibition, the first to seriously examine O’Keeffe’s paintings, drawings and pastels of urban landscapes while also situating them in the diverse context of her other compositions of the 1920s and early 1930s. The presentation establishes these works not as outliers or as anomalous to her practice but as entirely integral to her modernist investigation in the 1920s — from her abstractions and still lifes at Lake George in upstate New York and beyond to her works upon arriving in the Southwest in 1929. O’Keeffe’s “New Yorks” are essential to understanding how she became the artist we know today. This exhibition is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res images here.
“Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection”
Jan. 17-May 25, 2025
In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston and his wife Loraine began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art in the late 1960s and 1970s. Although they acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawings, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works. This exhibition, featuring works by artists including Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
“Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing”
Feb. 21-July 13, 2025
Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe and America in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterized by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and photographs that favored extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism. This exhibition, uniting more than 100 works from the High’s robust photography collection, will trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham and Moholy-Nagy will be complemented by works by a multitude of modern and contemporary artists such as Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
“Ryoji Ikeda”
March 7-Aug. 3, 2025
Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966, Gifu, Japan; active Paris and Kyoto) is one of the world’s leading composers and media artists. Next year, the High will present the U.S. debut of “data-verse,” Ikeda’s trilogy of monumental, immersive light and sound installations that represents more than two decades of research by the artist and reflects upon the progressive digitalization of an integrated global society. The exhibition will also premiere new work alongside existing works, including “data gram,” a series of 18 monitors that take apart, analyze and recombine information in “data-verse.” Ikeda’s immersive video projections, which will be presented floor-to-ceiling onto the walls of the museum’s largest exhibition space, feature visualizations of data extracted from mathematical theories and the study of quantum physics. His more recent work, including “data-verse,” incorporates open-source imagery from institutions such as NASA, CERN and the Human Genome Project. Ikeda produced “data-verse” in three “chapters,” transforming the open-sourced data sets through self-written programs to create the works’ visual output, which is then synchronized and composed in arrangement with an electronic score. Together, the music, video projections and the museum’s architecture become a dynamically balanced, self-contained whole. Ikeda’s work immerses the audience in a seemingly endless flow of data and explores the macroscopic depths of the universe and our relationship to it. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
“Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan”
April 11-Oct. 26, 2025
The High is organizing the first American museum exhibition featuring the work of Kim Chong Hak (born 1937, Sinuiju, Korea), a master painter from South Korea popularly known as “the painter of Mount Seorak” — the highest peak in the country’s Taebaek mountain range. With more than 70 works, including new acquisitions from the High’s collection, the exhibition will span the arc of Kim’s mature career and present an aspect of Korean art in the late 20th century little known outside of South Korea. Having first worked as an abstract painter in the 1960s, Kim ultimately rejected the adoption of Western-style abstraction, which he viewed as a response to national melancholy brought on by previous decades of hardship and deprivation. In the late 1970s, he settled in Gangwon Province, eastern South Korea, home of Mount Seorak. There he sought out an alternative artistic discourse, moving away from the monochromatic painting popular in Korea at that time toward his unabashedly expressive style. He has since dedicated his life and work to interpreting the environs of Mount Seorak, developing an artistic and emotional attunement to the natural world during decades of self-imposed isolation in the mountains. His work reasserts the expressive potency of mountain imagery in traditional East Asian art while also demonstrating the influence of international movements of the 1970s and 1980s such as neo-expressionism and other strains of figurative painting. The exhibition will travel nationally after it debuts at the High. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
“Ezrom Legae: Beasts”
June 13 – November 16, 2025
This is the first major museum exhibition in the United States for celebrated South African draughtsman and sculptor Ezrom Legae (1938-1999). After the establishment of apartheid, many modernists in South Africa contended with its corresponding oppression and bodily violence by presenting the human figure in animal form or brutally abstracting it. This exhibition focuses on Legae’s own bestial compositions, featuring more than 30 drawings of contorted and anguished creatures, each imaginative studies and explorations of form and metaphors articulating the artist’s political consciousness. The exhibition foregrounds two decades of the artist’s career, the 1970s and 1990s, each groundbreaking periods in South African political history. Mounting unrest and anti-apartheid protests in the 1970s, such as the Soweto Uprisings, were met with increased imprisonment, exile and violence against both activists and civilians. This period is considered Legae’s most prolific, in which he produced pencil, ink and charcoal depictions of animals as covert representations of apartheid’s players and impact. The artist produced substantially less until the 1990s, when he reemerged during South Africa’s political transition with drawings addressing the end of apartheid and lingering concerns regarding racism and poverty. Legae’s beasts exemplify the ways artists use coded visual languages to subvert and endure tyranny. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Currently on View
“Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space”
Through Dec. 1, 2024
Atlanta native Tyler Mitchell (born 1995) ascended to global prominence when he photographed Beyoncé for the September 2018 issue of Vogue as the first Black artist to shoot the cover in the magazine’s history. This major exhibition displays the trailblazing photographic artist and filmmaker’s seamless blend of fine art and fashion photography, along with a new photo-sculptural artwork. In his practice, Mitchell centers Black self-determination and empowerment with affirmative images of people who are often shown enjoying the freedom of leisure, play and recreation. This homecoming exhibition features more than 30 photographs considering his examination of themes such as masculinity, motherhood, domesticity, play, rest and the natural world. The playfully theatrical, expressive works explore style, beauty and identity; they delve into the profound themes of family and connection, capturing not just moments but the essence of relationships, and weave a narrative of love, intimacy and shared experiences. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res images here.
“Panorama”
Through Dec. 1, 2024
This interactive sculptural installation commissioned for the Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza is a kaleidoscope of color, light and reflection designed by Rotterdam-based Studio Sabine Marcelis. Consisting of four rotating glass pillars, “Panorama” reflects light, scenery and the urban environment of the piazza by pulling light into a de-saturated space to generate colorful reflections and increase the visual impact of the work. By entering the space between the pillars as they rotate, visitors are given a seamless visual experience that offers a different perspective of their surroundings. The installation literally and metaphorically reflects the sun, transforming perceptions and injecting warmth into the experience of entering the piazza. “Panorama” presents a new dimension for Studio Sabine Marcelis, as it’s the designer’s first monumental and kinetic work that embraces dynamism through movement. Known for working with elements like light and glass, Marcelis has fused her work in spatial design with the High’s mission to present interactive activations, resulting in a unique installation that speaks to her continued innovation and manipulation of materials. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res images here.
“Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection”
Through Jan. 5, 2025
Over the past six years, the High has more than quintupled its holdings of quilts made by Black women. This collection-based exhibition is the first to bring a number of these recent acquisitions together to answer a larger question: “How can quilts made by Black women change the way we tell the history of abstract art?” “Patterns in Abstraction” includes 17 works by well-known Gee’s Bend quilters such as Mary Lee Bendolph, Louisiana Bendolph and Lucy T. Pettway, along with works by Atlanta-based quilters such as Marquetta Johnson and early 20th-century examples by makers once known. The quilts on view are mostly variations on Birds in the Air and Housetop themes — two centuries-old quilt patterns that are geometric distillations of natural phenomenon and humanmade environments — while others have deeper meanings as memorials to family members. Presented as objects made for use and with the artistic intent to represent people, places and things abstractly and through layered symbolism, these quilts offer a larger window into how the production of nonacademic artists can transform our understanding of artistic innovation in American art. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Read the full press release here.
Download high-res 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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Media contacts:
Marci Tate Davis
Manager of Public Relations
404-733-4585
marci.davis@high.org
Brittany Mizell
Senior Coordinator, Public Relations
404-733-4423
brittany.mizell@high.org