Arts & Literature

High Museum of Art’s 2019 Advance Exhibition Schedule

Published

6 years ago

March 17, 2019

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

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 March 5, 2019.

European Masterworks: The Phillips Collection
April 6 through July 14, 2019
The High is the exclusive venue in the Southeast for this exhibition, which will feature 75 iconic paintings and sculptures from The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art. These incomparable European Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Expressionist artworks from the late 19th through the mid-20th century exemplify the distinctive eye of collector Duncan Phillips, who opened his acclaimed museum in Washington, D.C., in 1921. Visitors to the exhibition will encounter masterpieces by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh in dialogue with exquisite examples of Romanticism and Realism by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, which Phillips considered historical sources of modernism. Also featured are superb works by modern artists who held a special place in Phillips’ pioneering collection and who shaped the look of the 20th century, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Nicolas de Staël, Alberto Giacometti, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. Many of the works have not traveled together in more than 20 years. This exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Strange Light: The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin
May 11 through Nov. 10, 2019
Dubbed the “Father of American Surrealism,” Clarence John Laughlin (1905–1985) was the most important Southern photographer of his time and a singular figure in the development of the American school of photography. The High boasts one of the largest and most important monographic holdings of Laughlin’s work, and the Museum will celebrate his legacy with this comprehensive exhibition. The show surveys Laughlin’s signature photographs between 1935 and 1965 from more than 80 prints in the Museum’s collection, including many from a landmark 2015 acquisition that will be on view at the High for the first time. The exhibition will also feature works by key artists who influenced Laughlin’s development. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Of Origins and Belonging, Drawn from Atlanta
June 1 through Sept. 29, 2019
Of Origins and Belonging is the third in a series of exhibitions at the High focused on work by Atlanta-based artists. The exhibition will feature six artists who address issues related to place, belonging and heritage in their work: Jessica Caldas, Yehimi Cambrón, Xie Caomin, Wihro Kim, Dianna Settles and Cosmo Whyte. Compelled by the national debate and dialogue around immigration reform, this iteration of the High’s Atlanta drawings project features artists whose distinct voices, diverse perspectives and personal experiences represent worldviews informed and enriched by their cultural heritage and the bond they share as members of a diverse creative community in Atlanta. Among the participating artists, Caomin and Whyte immigrated to the United States as adults, and Cambron is a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient. Of Origins and Belonging will consider the ways foreign-born citizens, residents and their children or grandchildren contribute to Atlanta’s growing population, thriving economy, diverse cultural landscape and burgeoning arts scene. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children
June 22 through Sept. 15, 2019
The High Museum of Art will premiere this colorful exhibition exploring the extensive catalog of Maira Kalman’s imaginative stories and illustrations, which have delighted readers of all ages for more than 30 years. Perhaps best known for her quirky New Yorker magazine covers and brilliant pictorial essays, Kalman (American, born 1949) has published more than a dozen books for adults and 18 acclaimed children’s books, beginning with the game-changing picture book “Stay Up Late” (1985), which gave visual form to the famous Talking Heads song from the album “Little Creatures.” Since then her works have followed the comic adventures of beloved characters, including a poet dog named Max Stravinsky and Pete the dog, and have addressed important historical people and events with books including “Looking at Lincoln” (2012) and the 9/11-inspired “Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey” (2002). The Pursuit of Everything will provide an immersive panorama of Kalman’s picture-book career spanning three decades, including newer publications such as “Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote” (2018), authored by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and the illustrated cookbook “Cake” (2018), written in collaboration with the food writer Barbara Scott-Goodman. The more than 100 works on view will include original drawings and paintings from Kalman’s award-winning books, along with manuscripts, dummy books and other ephemera. This exhibition marks the High’s fourth collaboration with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and is presented in conjunction with a world premiere play based on Kalman’s work by the Alliance Theatre. This exhibition is organized by The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, Massachusetts. Support for the High Museum’s presentation is provided by the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation.

“Something Over Something Else”: Romare Bearden’s Profile Series
Sept. 14, 2019, through Jan. 5, 2020
Organized by the High, this touring exhibition will be the first to bring dozens of works from Romare Bearden’s eminent “Profile” series together since its debut nearly 40 years ago. In November 1977, The New Yorker magazine published a feature-length biography of Bearden (American, 1911–1988) as part of its “Profiles” series. The article brought national focus to the artist, whose rise had been virtually meteoric since the late 1960s, and the experience of the interview prompted Bearden to launch his autobiographical “Profile” collection. He sequenced the project in two parts: “Part I/The Twenties,” featuring memories from his youth in the South and in Pittsburgh, and “Part II/The Thirties,” about his early adult life in New York. Inspired by the High’s recent acquisition of a key work from the series, “Something Over Something Else” will be the first exhibition to reassemble more than 30 collages from the series and to re-create the experience of its original presentations in 1978 and 1981, which featured accompanying wall texts Bearden wrote in collaboration with his friend Albert Murray, an essayist, jazz critic and novelist. Beyond providing the opportunity to explore an understudied body of work, the exhibition will investigate the roles of narrative and self-presentation for an artist who made a career of creating works based on memory and experience. It will also reveal some of Bearden’s broader inspirations, which lend insight into American life in the first decades of the 20th century. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings
Oct. 19, 2019, through Jan. 12, 2020
For more than 40 years, Sally Mann (American, born 1951) has made experimental, elegiac and hauntingly beautiful photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: memory, desire, death, the bonds of family and nature’s magisterial indifference to human endeavor. What unites her broad body of work, including portraits, still lifes, landscapes and other studies, is that it is all “bred of a place”: the American South. A native of Virginia, Mann has long written about what it means to live in the South and be identified as a Southerner. This major exhibition of the celebrated photographer’s work investigates how her relationship with her native land—as place and source of identity, with a rich literary and artistic tradition and a troubled history—has shaped her photographs. By incorporating a deep love of the South with her knowledge of its historically fraught heritage, Mann creates photographs that prompt powerful, provocative questions about history, identity, race and religion. Organized into five sections—family, landscape, battlefields, legacy and mortality—and featuring many works not previously exhibited, the exhibition is both a sweeping overview of Mann’s artistic achievement over the past four decades and a focused exploration of how the South emerges in her work as a powerful and provocative force that continues to shape American identity and experience. This exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Peabody Essex Museum.

Currently on view:

Look Again: 45 Years of Collecting Photography
Through April 14, 2019
Photography is a uniquely elastic medium. It can fulfill numerous utilitarian purposes—recording personal memories, chronicling collective histories or furnishing documentary evidence—yet it also offers dynamic potential for creative expression. The High began collecting photographs in the early 1970s, and the collection now includes more than 7,000 photographs from around the world made by diverse practitioners, from artists to entrepreneurs, journalists and scientists. Spanning the very beginnings of the medium in the 1840s to the present, the collection has depth in American modernist and documentary traditions from the 20th century as well as current contemporary practices. This exhibition, drawn from the High’s collection and local private collections, explores the medium’s layered history and its ever-evolving present by delving into the myriad ways a photograph can be a conduit for ideas, information and emotion. Through the collection’s most prized prints and many unsung gems, the exhibition surveys a broad sweep of the history of photography, incorporating some of its oldest photographic objects along with prints made in the past year, while emphasizing the distinct strengths of the High’s collection. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

William Christenberry: Time & Texture
Through April 14, 2019
A pioneer of color photography, William Christenberry dedicated his career to articulating the unique character of his native Hale County, Alabama. For four decades beginning in the 1960s, Christenberry photographed the vernacular architecture and rural landscape of central Alabama on an annual basis, creating a prolonged study of place and the passing of time. This exhibition includes more than 100 photographs by Christenberry and is drawn entirely from the High’s collection. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Way Out There: The Art of Southern Backroads
Through May 18, 2019Collaboratively organized by the Museum’s renowned photography and folk and self-taught art departments, this exhibition celebrates the South’s self-taught artists and offers a rare look at how their worlds converged with contemporary American photography and literature. Way Out There is inspired by a guidebook of Southern self-taught artists by late poet and publisher Jonathan Williams, who had road-tripped around the South with photographers Guy Mendes and Roger Manley in the 1980s and ’90s. The manuscript lay in a drawer for decades until recently rediscovered and published this year. The exhibition will bring the spirit of Williams’ book to life with more than 50 sculptures, paintings and other works from the High’s collection presented alongside approximately 100 of Mendes’ and Manley’s photographs, many on view for the very first time. Artworks in the show represent more than a dozen artists, including Eddie Owens Martin (“St. EOM”), Sam Doyle, Mose Tolliver, Thornton Dial, Edgar Tolson, Georgia Blizzard, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Howard Finster and many others. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Hand to Hand: Southern Craft of the 19th Century
Through Aug. 4, 2019
This exhibition focuses on a selection of masterworks from the High’s holdings of 19th-century Southern decorative arts, examining the great achievements in traditional, rural forms of quilts, ceramics, basketry and furniture. The styles, techniques and materials of each work reveal not only the talents of their makers but also the legacy of learned traditions that, in many instances, have continued to be handed down to subsequent generations. Reflecting the rich blend of cultural influences in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and beyond, the exhibition includes several important works by African-American makers, including David Drake, an enslaved potter working in South Carolina in the first half of the 19th century. Since the 1970s, the High has celebrated and explored the role and impact of Southern decorative arts, including the legacy of historical folk art, which forms an important component of the Museum’s current program through the mutual efforts of its decorative arts and design and folk and self-taught art departments. This exhibition is the first in the new changing exhibition space established as part of the Museum’s collection reinstallation and located on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing. This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

About the High Museum of Art
Located in the heart of Atlanta, Ga., 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 17,000 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 pre-history 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.

Related Topics:arts High Museum of Art museum

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Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Arts & Literature

The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People: Q&A with Author Dan Leonard

Published

12 hours ago

February 22, 2025

Shawne Taylor

A man with short dark and grey hair wearing sunglasses and a black, long-sleeved zip up. He's standing by the railing of a boat in Milford Sound New Zealand with water and tall cliffs behind him. He's smiling and the sky above is dark blue with a few wispy white clouds.

Dan Leonard has called Peachtree Corners home for the past 42 years, working in the IT field, building a strong community of personal and professional connections and leading the local Bikes and Friends Cycling Club.

Most recently, he wrote and released his first book — a memoir titled “The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People” — adding ‘published author’ to his list of accomplishments.

Drawing on the physical challenges Dan faced (and overcame) while growing up, as well as inspiration from others, the book dives into themes of resilience and personal growth while painting a vivid picture of his family life in New England during the 60s and 70s.

Through personal narrative, he takes readers on a thought-provoking journey through his childhood and adolescence, sharing “formative experiences that were shaped by his Italian-American and Irish-German heritage.”

Dan spoke with us recently about his memoir, sharing his thoughts on the writing process, lessons learned and his future plans.

Front and back book covers for The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People by Dan Leonard. The front cover has a photo of the author outdoors in a grassy field with mountains behind him. The back cover has book description and QR code. — photo courtesy of Dan Leonard

What inspired you to write a memoir? What challenges, if any, did you face?

On the surface, like many people my age closing in on 70, I wanted to leave a legacy, telling my story of resilience and transformation to hopefully inspire others.

I once read that people should consider their mental health before writing a memoir. At the time I didn’t quite appreciate that statement. Like many outgoing people, I usually enjoyed talking about myself, especially while trying to relate to others.

Writing my memoir turned out to be a very positive experience since I tried to explore my story with honesty and compassion while highlighting the people and experiences that had the most influence on me. However, in the final throes of completing a rough draft, I spent nearly two weeks without sleep and experienced daytime dream-like episodes.

For example, I have a former classmate who is a successful screenwriter, and I was intent on getting him my manuscript because I thought it might make a compelling movie!

The book took me over a year [to write] and was a worthwhile and enjoyable experience and, I would say, cathartic as well.

I spent 42 years in the Information Technology field mostly working closely with major corporations helping them streamline and digitize their operations. I began in sales and marketing and moved to management later in my career.

I have always enjoyed writing for pleasure, but much of my writing was business oriented and expected to be short and concise. I have been interviewed many times in my career leading to industry centric publications but nothing with sole direct personal benefit such as my recent memoir or upcoming novel.

The book is about resilience and recognizing that ordinary moments can have an extraordinary impact on one’s life. Have you always seen the world this way? Or was it something that came to you over time?

I have always been deeply introspective but with a strong desire to relate well with others and make friends.

Given my humble beginnings experiencing many physical challenges from night time seizures, pronated ankles, severe allergies, a slight lisp and ADD among other things, I never felt like I was working from a position of strength. I typically felt like the underdog, especially anxious to prove to both myself and others that I could be just as good.

Each triumph seemed to require an extraordinary effort sometimes just to meet the norm.

What was the most difficult or unexpected thing you encountered writing and publishing the book?

To be completely honest, the most difficult thing was to convince myself that my story was worth telling and that other people besides my family and closest friends would be truly interested.

Who was I, really? I was never a CEO, famous athlete, politician or war hero. I was just a regular guy who lived a mostly ordinary life but, in many cases, encountered extraordinary challenges.

Maybe partly because I have a tendency to be bold and take on challenges that I am not always prepared for, I would sometimes get in my head and say, “well everybody has a story, some lots more interesting than yours, so why would anyone be interested in yours?”

Early and mid-stream through my writing, there were days and even weeks when I let these thoughts stall my writing, but fortunately they were only temporary.

What lessons did you learn from the process?

You’ll have to read my book!

When I began writing the book, I was at a point where I had retired from my 42-year career and was no longer actively consulting. My life involved spending as much time as possible cycling with my club, Bikes and Friends, completing home projects and spending time with family.

I would typically rise at 7 or 8 a.m., unless I had an early bike ride, and move through the day at a very comfortable pace. Finally completing the book and committing to a marketing campaign and future publications over the next several months has given me a renewed purpose. I now start my day at 6 a.m., go to the gym and work harder, write as much as possible and seek out more purposeful endeavors.

I met [recently] with the City of Peachtree Corners to begin planning a charity ride later this year. And I am evaluating a board position at a local non-profit.

What’s the main thing you’d like readers to take away from Extraordinary Lives?

That their life is every bit as valuable as others, and if they have any interest in sharing their story or anything that they desire then to do it to their fullest!

You’re traveling for events to promote the book. Will you be doing any promotional events closer to home?

Yes, I will be speaking at the local Fowler YMCA on March 14, and as my book marketing reaches a proposed 300 platforms over the next few weeks, I expect to have at least a few nearby book signings and presence in local bookstores.

Do you have plans to write another book?

Absolutely! I am currently working on a futuristic sci-fi novel based on a group of cyclists called “Defending His Life,” which will hopefully be available by June.

The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People is available on Amazon. Are there other places readers can purchase the book?

It will also be available on BN.com and in select Barnes and Noble stores. My publisher hub partner plans to push 200+ copies out to select bookstores, so hopefully many other places [as well].

Many people my age relate to the way things used to be, where only famous people wrote books and they were limited to highly selective publishing houses that controlled their intellectual property.

It’s a new world, anyone that has something to say can say it, and there are so many different mediums available today. Be bold and get out there and say it. Your reward will go way beyond practical measures and may certainly open up new opportunities.

If nothing else, writing my memoir has given me an opportunity to reengage with people that I haven’t talked with or thought about in years and even decades.

About The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People

From enduring challenges and overcoming adversity to honoring the strength of family bonds, Dan’s debut book offers a look at how ordinary moments can have an extraordinary impact.

The memoir is currently available on Amazon as an e-book, hardback and paperback. It should soon be available on bn.com, at our local Barnes and Noble and in other bookstores as well.

For more information about Dan Leonard, visit booksbydanleonard.com.

Arts & Literature

Tales From the Farm: Q&A with Local Indie Children’s Author, Katie Morgan Lester

Published

4 weeks ago

January 27, 2025

Shawne Taylor

Middle-aged woman with blonde hair, smiling and wearing a blue shirt. She's standing with a building and a cow behind her, and she's holding copies of the three children's books she's written.

Local children’s author and illustrator, Katie Morgan Lester, recently released a new book — the third in her Morgan Farm Books series. Launched last year, Gracie the Goat is all about the importance of being a good listener. Inspired by Lester’s own pet goat from childhood, it tells the tale of Gracie and her adventures in meeting a new friend.

Gracie the Goat follows two previous titles in the series: Picky Pig Pete and Raymond the Rooster. Each of the books includes simple life lessons, as well as rhyming lines, watercolor illustrations and photos of the real animals the stories are based on — elements that appeal to younger kids as well as early readers.

We recently caught up with the Peachtree Corners author to hear more about her life, the book series and what inspires her work.

How long have you lived in Peachtree Corners?

My husband Mark and I have lived in Peachtree Corners for approximately 20 years. We knew even before having our son Brandon (who is now 17 years old and a junior at Norcross High School), that we loved the area and the people here.

We adore the street we live on with such loving neighbors. We’ve been blessed to be in Peachtree Corners with others providing such a sense of community.

In addition to creating children’s books, I am also a cardio instructor at the local YMCA, and I teach a part time preschool class and an after-school art class at Simpsonwood United Methodist Church.

What led you to want to write children’s books?

I grew up on a South Carolina farm with many types of animals. As a child and throughout my adulthood, I have loved to draw illustrations.

I graduated from Furman University with a studio art degree, [then] worked in advertising and marketing for 20 years but always did artwork as a side business — my favorite things to paint being children’s room décor and murals.

A blonde haired woman in a pink, long sleeve shirt standing next to her teenage son and husband. — from left: Brandon, Katie and Mark; photo courtesy of Katie Morgan Lester

Once I had our son Brandon, I aspired to create a children’s book with my own illustrations to dedicate to him. I slowly began creating a rhyming story and the characters to include. I used the farm I grew up on as the setting, and all of the animal characters in my books are based on real ones from there.

Where did the idea for the series come from?

My maiden name is Morgan and the name of the farm I grew up on is Morgan Farms. The farm is the setting for all of my books. To use Morgan Farm Books as my series name came naturally and keeps me connected to my family roots.

Each book has an important message for children: Picky Pig Pete teaches children to try something new — whether that’s a new food or an activity — and can be a help to [those with picky eaters]. Raymond the Rooster is a great message that friends come in all colors, shapes and sizes. And Gracie the Goat teaches children to be good listeners.

Gracie the Goat children's book by Katie Morgan Lester. Front cover and back cover are shown. The books are sitting on top of a bale of hay in front of a barn. — photo courtesy of Katie Morgan Lester

While each book has its own story and can easily be purchased separately, I felt having a series title would connect my current and future books. It can also give encouragement for those that buy the books to want to continue the series.

How many books do you plan to write and illustrate in the series?

I enjoy writing and illustrating children’s books so much that I would love to continue for years to come. I do not have any specific number of books in mind, but will continue on as long as there are more farm animals and stories to write.

I am currently writing my fourth book. As with the others, I’m pulling out one of the current animals to be the main character and hope to have it completed by the end of 2025. The message for that one will be about emotions.

Please keep checking in with me [at my website] as I’ll begin to provide more information on that book soon!

Three children's books: one about a pig, one about a rooster and one about a goat, sitting on top of a bale of hay in front of a barn. — photo courtesy of Katie Morgan Lester

What ages are your books intended for?

The books are great for baby gifts all the way up to approximately eight years old. With the rhyming in each, the books are perfect for early readers. I do add a little bit of humor to each to make them enjoyable for parents as well.

Where can parents find your books?

The Morgan Farm Books can be purchased directly through me or my website. This allows me to write a personalized, encouraging note to your child(ren) and sign each one.

Website: morganfarmbooks.com/purchase-book

Instagram: instagram.com/morganfarmbooks

Facebook: facebook.com/morganfarmbooks

Combos may be purchased as well, which is a book paired with a small stuffed animal, lovingly packaged as a gift. I’m also available for in-person visits or virtual author/illustrator events featuring the books from my series.

For more information, visit morganfarmbooks.com.

Around Atlanta

The High Museum to Showcase “Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind”

Published

2 months ago

December 12, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Oil on paper artwork by Terry Winters. A large red circle with smaller blue circles on top of it and gold/yellow accents. All of it on a dark brown background.

The special exhibition of the Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will run January 17 through May 25, 2025

In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston, along with his wife and collaborator Loraine, began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works.

In 2025, the High Museum of Art will present Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection, featuring their collected works, which is a promised gift to the museum. Featuring artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, the exhibition will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye.

“The Johnstons have been friends of the High for a very long time. They’ve also built an impressive collection featuring works by many of the 20th century’s most significant abstract artists,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are honored that they have promised to leave their collection to the Museum where it will be preserved for future generations — and we are delighted that they are sharing it with our audiences now, hopefully inspiring the next generation of art collectors and supporters.”

A curated collection

The Johnstons’ story is a testament to, in the words of the High’s Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, “knowing the difference between what is right and what is almost right” when building a collection.

Although the Johnstons acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting in 1972, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawing, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation.

Ink drawing by Anne Truitt, rectangular lines and shapes made with black ink on off-white background — Anne Truitt (American, born 1921), *Ink Drawing ’59 [11]*, 1959, ink on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Estate of Anne Truitt / The Bridgeman Art Library / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Rooks added, “Med and Loraine’s collection struck me at once by its single-minded focus on a specific moment in time, which was essentially the time of their contemporaries. The artists in their collection are like close friends to the Johnstons — in fact many are or were. What is equally astonishing about the collection is the Johnstons’ dogged pursuit of quality. Their in-depth knowledge of each artist’s practice combined with their understanding of specific qualities to look for — or more appropriately, to hold out for — will be a revelation to emerging collectors.”

The Johnstons have built their collection with the High in mind as the benefactor of their passion and discernment. For them, their collection “is a labor of love, pursued over more than 50 years, and we are delighted to be able to help the High Museum document and celebrate these important artists working during the same decades as our lives.”

About the exhibit

Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will be presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.

The exhibit is organized by the High Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of sponsors:

Premier Exhibition Series Sponsor Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Premier Exhibition Series Supporters Mr. Joseph H. Boland, Jr., The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation, Harry Norman Realtors and wish Foundation
Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporters Robin and Hilton Howell
Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Loomis Charitable Foundation and Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters Farideh and Al Azadi, Mary and Neil Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, Megan and Garrett Langley, Margot and Danny McCaul, Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller and Belinda Stanley-Majors and Dwayne Majors.

Support has also been provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund and USI Insurance Services.

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 or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.

Top image: (from the collection) Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Orb, 2020, oil on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Terry Winters, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.