Impact
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Your generous support ensures the High Museum of Art remains a premier destination, presenting art and artists to inspire, enrich, and delight visitors of all backgrounds.
With thirteen exhibitions and dozens of school, family, and public programs, we facilitated an engaging dialogue with diverse audiences of more than 323,136 visitors on-site during FY20 (June 1, 2019–May 31, 2020) and served another 1,552,467 online.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Whether it is the popular Second Sundays when we open the Museum free to the public and offer a broad array of activities; Toddler Thursdays when the High is abuzz with the potential artists of tomorrow; or the new Creative Aging programs designed for older adults to experience our collection in fun and innovative ways, your support makes it possible for us to meet people of all ages where they are and provide profound, often transformational experiences.
Second Sundays
FY20 Attendance: 55,115
Average Monthly Attendance: 5,511+
On the second Sunday of each month, the High offers free admission for all visitors from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and special programming from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Each month features new activities including art making, performances, and tours of the High’s collection and special exhibitions.
Art Access
Total Attendance: 25,012
Art Access is designed to remove the economic barriers that typically prevent Title I school students from visiting the High Museum of Art. Art Access provides Georgia students a high-quality, dynamic learning experience that supports state standards.
Toddler Thursdays
FY20 Total Attendance: 6,525
Designed for children ages fifteen months through three years with their caregivers, Toddler Thursdays engage children’s creativity and incorporate monthly themes with related artwork, art-making activities, stories, and tours.
smARTbox
Children using smARTbox in FY2020: 8,763 new
and 3,318 returners
Total number of children with a smARTbox: 34,504
The smARTbox program was launched in July 2017 as a substantial new learning tool that combines the High’s robust art education and art-making materials in a handy kit that families with young children can enjoy while at the Museum and at home.
Education by the Numbers
Digital Outreach by the Numbers
Conservation
Thornton Dial (American, 1928-2016)
Struggling Tiger Know His Way Out (detail), 1991
enamel house paint, braided rug, tin, industrial sealing compound, and plywood on canvas mounted on wood
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
gift of William Arnett through the 20th-Century Art Acquisition Fund, 1992.51.
This past year, nine works were conserved mostly in preparation to go on view in a special exhibition. Special thanks go to Bank of America for funding the conservation and study of ten works by renowned African American artist Thornton Dial from the Museum’s collection. The Museum conducted a full assessment of these works using analytical and imaging techniques that captured each work’s component parts and created a baseline understanding of how Dial’s fabrication practices and materials have deteriorated over time. When complete, this project will not only facilitate the preservation of Dial’s most important assemblages but will also provide the basis for important scholarship on his materials and methods and establish protocols for the conservation of his work as well as the entire spectrum of self-taught artists working in nontraditional, mixed media.
Collections
In FY20, more than three hundred objects were added to the collection, including approximately $1.3 million expended for objects with an estimated combined value of more than $30 million.
Philanthropists Doris and Shouky Shaheen donated their entire Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modernist painting collection, totaling twenty-four artworks, to the Museum. The Shaheen gift is one of the most significant groups of European paintings ever to enter the Museum’s collection, rivaled only by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation donation in 1958, which established the core of the High’s European art holdings. This marks the High’s first acquisition of paintings by renowned artists such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Alfred Sisley. In recognition of the gift, the Museum established the Doris and Shouky Shaheen Gallery in its Stent Family Wing, where the paintings are currently on view.
Get Involved
To learn more about the various ways to support the High, visit Ways to give or call 404-733-4379.