High Museum Summer Exhibits (tuesdays)
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From the venue:
Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the HighCollection
Over the past six years, the High has more than quintupled its holdings of quilts made by Black women. This collection-based exhibition will be 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 will include about a dozen 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 quilter Marquetta Johnson and early twentieth-century examples by artists 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 both objects made for use and with the artistic intent to represent people, places, and things abstractly, these quilts offer a window into how the production of nonacademic artists can transform our understanding of artistic innovation in American art. A corresponding publication through LINK, the museum’s platform for online engagement, will offer multimedia and interactive content related to the High’s expanded and growing collection of Black quilts.
Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space
Tyler Mitchell is an American photographer and filmmaker renowned for his tender and innovative portrayals that center Black self-determination and empowerment through scenes of love, leisure, and camaraderie. Mitchell rose to global prominence in 2018 when he photographed Beyonce for the September issue of Vogue as the first Black artist to shoot the cover in the magazine’s then 126-year history. He explores style, beauty, and identity through playfully theatrical, expressive photographs that seamlessly blend his fashion and conceptual work.
Drawing inspiration from the landscapes, homes, and communities of suburban Atlanta where he was raised, this homecoming exhibition features work made from 2017 to 2024 and considers Mitchell’s exploration of themes such as family lineage, play, companionship, the natural world, and domestic spaces. His lens captures the essence of relationships, weaving an intimate narrative of shared experiences.
All works of art are by Tyler Mitchell (American, born 1995) unless otherwise noted.
Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Observers in the seventeenth century described the Netherlands as the world’s marketplace. Dutch merchants possessed a capitalist mindset and benefited from innovations in naval and military technology. The Dutch East India Company, the world’s first multinational corporation, was founded in 1602 to dominate trade in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, forever changing the global economy. New commodities flowed to the Dutch Republic and made a small nation immensely rich. This in turn fueled an artistic boom. The most famous Dutch artists in the seventeenth century - Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Ruysch are still admired today.
exhibit page here
Truth Told Slant: Contemporary Photography
Truth Told Slant examines a recent shift in how photographers have taken on the challenge of making meaningful images of the world around them. Rather than using the traditional documentary approach of dispassionate observation, they work in a stylistically expressive manner akin to literary nonfiction, weaving between observational and narrative modes while embracing their own subjectivity.
The title of this exhibition, which is inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem, accentuates the sidelong and deeply personal approach these artists use to make sense of the current social and political landscape. The five artists gathered here -Jill Frank, Rose Marie Cromwell, Zora J Murff, Kristine Potter, and Tommy Kha -consider issues that documentary photographers have grappled with for decades and that remain pertinent today. They explore topics of American life, such as race and inequality; identity and sexual orientation; immigration and globalization; youth and coming of age; climate change and environmental justice; and the pervasiveness of violence, to reveal deeper truths and reframe prevailing narratives in a manner that is more felt than didactic.
Three Decades of Democracy: South African Works on Paper
On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, marking the end of decades of systematic and legalized racial segregation known as apartheid. This installation commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the end of apartheid through a presentation of South African prints and works on paper from the High’s collection. The eight artists featured make observations about South African social and cultural life, employing their art to resist, witness, and reflect.
Shaheen Collection of French Works
Through the generosity of numerous collectors, benefactors, and supporters, the High Museum has assembled a distinguished collection of European art ranging in date from the fourteenth through twentieth centuries. The collection of paintings displayed in this installation represent the accomplishment of Doris and Shouky Shaheen. Collected over a span of four decades, these works were presented as a gift to the High Museum in 2019.
The Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection focuses on French art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within this timeframe, the paintings represent an array of styles, including the pre-Impressionist realism of Eugene Boudin’s harbor views, the shimmering Impressionism of Claude Monet’s and Camille Pissarro’s landscapes, and the expressive modernism of Amedeo Modigliani’s and Henri Matisse’s figure studies.