High
Museum of Art

Permanent Collections

Your visit can be a journey through time. Walk across continents. The museum’s collections of more than 11,000 pieces invite you to proceed at your own pace. Sample the museum’s 19th and 20th century American and European paintings, decorative art, modern and contemporary art, photography, African art and a distinctive collection of folk art.

Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, Balzac Petanque, 2002. Fiber-reinforced plastic, cast epoxy and stainless steel, painted with polyester gelcoat. Overall 102x300x444 in Purchased with funds from Mr. and Mrs J. Mack Robinson. Photo Jonathan Hillyer Photography, Inc. 2005

African Art Collections

The heart and soul of the museum’s African Art collection consists of sculptures from west and central Africa. Most were created between 1850 and 1950. Bold, distinctive, evocative sculptures are eye-catching. A Baga sculpture from New Guinea was a gift to the museum from cosmetics legend Helena Rubenstein.

The galleries also include masks, figurative sculpture, beadwork, metalwork and ceramic arts.

Bukina Faso mask

American Art Gallery

Independent spirit has long defined America. That spirit can be seen in American art. Amazing works by renowned artists of the 19th and 20th centuries include William Merritt Chase, Henry Ossawa Tanner, John Twachtman and Childe Hassam. If you aren’t familiar with these names now, make sure to look for them when you’re in the museum. You’ll likely find their work unforgettable.

There are more: Joseph Stella and Georgia O’Keefe. The full American collection rings in at 900 objects.

Francis Criss, Alma Sewing, painting 1935

Howard Finster’s Outsider Art Paradise Garden

Ongoing – Included with CityPASS

In the 60's, Howard Finster started a four-acre garden in Pennville, Georgia. He planted edible and ornamental plants, built walkways and built fanciful edifices, such as Bible House and Mirror House. He constructed miniature mountains encrusted with thousands of found objects. Finster, declared “a man of visions” at the age of three, was always guided by his visions. One, his garden, turned out to be his ticket to international fame. Dubbed Paradise Garden by Esquire magazine, people from around the world came to visit.

Howard Finster (American, 1916-2001), Waste Can, ca. 1979, enamel on metal, gift of Andy Nasisse for the Nasisse Collection, 1993.95. Weaned Child on the Cockatrice's Den ca. 1979 on concrete, glass, mirrors, ceramic, white marble stone and brick, Purchase with funds from the Cousins Foundation, Inc. and donors to the Paradise Project Campaign, 1994.216.2

Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer

June 5, 2010-Jan. 9, 2011 – Included with CityPASS

This exhibition is the first in-depth presentation of the photographs of Peter Sekaer (American, born Denmark, 1901–1950), a Danish-born artist who made a vivid photographic record of Depression-era America. While Sekaer's well-respected photographs were occasionally exhibited during his lifetime, he slipped into obscurity after his premature death in 1950.

Many of these works have never been on public view. This exhibition shows the range of Sekaer's production and the unique place that he occupies in the constellation of twentieth-century American photography.

Peter Sekaer Family Shelling Pecans, Austin, Texas, 1939, purchase with funds from Robert Yellowlees.

Salvador Dalí: The Late Work

August 7, 2010-Jan. 9, 2011 – Included with CityPASS

The first major exhibition to reevaluate the last half of Salvador Dalí's career will be presented exclusively at the High Museum this August. In the late 1930s Dalí underwent a radical change, in which he embraced Catholicism, developed the concept of nuclear mysticism and, in effect, reinvented himself as an artist. Comprising more than 40 paintings and a related group of drawings, prints and other Dalí ephemera, Salvador Dalí: The Late Work will explore the artist's enduring fascination with science, optical effects and illusionism as well as his connections to such artists and celebrities of the 1960s and 1970s as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning and Alice Cooper.

Salvador Dalí, Christ of St. John of the Cross, 1951, oil on canvas, 80 3/4 x 45 3/4 inches, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Photo: Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)