In 1931, the painter Hale Woodruff stepped off a streetcar after arriving in Atlanta and walked into what he called "some kind of a museum way out on Peachtree Street." Atlanta Magazine retold the story this month in its centennial feature on the High Museum of Art, and it notes that several of his murals now hang in the museum.
That museum "way out on Peachtree" stands across the street from Ansley Park, and it is in its hundredth year. The headline event, a free Centennial Block Party on Peachtree Street, took place on Sunday, October 18, exactly a century after the original museum first opened to the public. Most of the centennial is still to come, though, and the dates worth planning around are the ones where the High's calendar overlaps with its neighbors. On those days, the museum, the new Midtown Green, the Atlanta Botanical Garden and the Woodruff Arts Center stages all fall inside one walk from an Ansley Park front door.
A House Among the Peachtree Mansions
The museum carries the name of Harriet "Hattie" Harwell Wilson High, who gave her home to the Atlanta Art Association on May 9, 1926, for a museum and art school named in memory of her husband, Joseph Madison High. Atlanta Magazine describes the house as a sprawling, 24,000-square-foot Tudor-style residence on Peachtree Street between 15th and 16th Streets. That land is now part of the museum's 12-acre campus. The renovated house opened to visitors on October 18, 1926.
Back then, the site sat at the city's edge. "There were just a few people living out there in the country," Julia Forbes, the High's associate director of institutional research, told Atlanta Magazine. "I think Midtown grew up around [the High] because, in a lot of senses, the museum came first, and these beautiful neighborhoods . . . were just starting."
Over the following decades, the campus took in more of Peachtree's grand houses. According to the same feature, the High added three more estates and a fourth home that became an art school. All of them were demolished between 1954 and the early 1960s, and a purpose-built museum opened on Peachtree in 1955. The Atlanta Memorial Arts Center, now the Woodruff Arts Center, opened in 1968 and brought the High, the Alliance Theatre and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra together on one campus. Richard Meier's building, now called the Stent Family Wing, followed in 1983. Renzo Piano's three-building expansion around a central piazza opened in November 2005.
The history matters for this fall's calendar. The museum's own story is about buildings, architects and the street they stand on, and some of the best centennial programming is built around that story.
What the Centennial Still Holds After the Birthday
The High's centennial page keeps the party going through October and then shifts into a steady monthly schedule. These are the dates still ahead as of this week:
| Date | Event | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, Oct. 23 | Teen Highlight: Centennial Halloween, organized by the High's Teen Leadership Council | 6–9 p.m. |
| Thursday, Oct. 29 | Walking Tour: 100 Years of High Museum History | 1:30–3 p.m. |
| Friday, Oct. 30 | A Haunting at 100 | 6–10 p.m. |
| Friday, Nov. 6 | November High Frequency Friday | 6–10 p.m. |
| Sunday, Nov. 8 | UPS Second Sunday, free admission | 12–5 p.m. |
| Friday, Nov. 20 | November Friday Jazz | 6–10 p.m. |
| Friday, Dec. 4 | December High Frequency Friday | 6–10 p.m. |
| Friday, Dec. 18 | December Friday Jazz | 6–10 p.m. |
For anyone who lives among Ansley Park's mix of Tudor, Italian Renaissance and Prairie houses, the October 29 walking tour is the one to book. The High describes it as an introduction to "the architects who designed the buildings that have housed the High throughout its history." That history runs from the Tudor house to Meier's white wing and Piano's piazza, and it plays out on the same stretch of Peachtree the neighborhood looks across.
A Haunting at 100 on October 30 is the museum's Halloween night. The High bills it as "a party worthy of a century of secrets" and "a Halloween night unlike anything else the museum has hosted."
The Free Days, and Why December 13 Stands Out
The High offers free admission on a set schedule. UPS Second Sunday is free for all visitors on the second Sunday of each month and includes family programming. The centennial page lists November 8 and December 13 for the rest of this year. Access for All days, also free, fall on November 18 and December 16.
On December 13, the free Sunday overlaps with the last Midtown Artisan Market of the year at Midtown Green, Midtown Alliance's new public space at 98 14th Street. Midtown Green sits on 14th between Peachtree and West Peachtree, one block south of the Arts Center MARTA station. The market runs from noon to 6 p.m., and Rough Draft Atlanta reports that each one brings 20 to 30 artisan vendors along with food and family activities. The High's free hours that day run from noon to 5 p.m., so the two schedules nearly match. That makes it the one Sunday this season when an afternoon of free galleries and an afternoon of holiday shopping fit into a single loop across Peachtree.
The markets on October 25 and November 22 follow the same noon-to-6 schedule. Midtown Alliance describes Midtown Green as a site "just beginning its transformation" that will become an art-filled park. This fall's events also give visitors a chance to see the long-term plan and share ideas with the project team. Its free Thursday fitness classes, Cardio Dance with instructor Dawn Peck, run through the end of October from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
The Order the Galleries Close
The centennial-year exhibitions close one after another through the winter. Ranked by deadline, they make a simple plan for anyone who wants to fit them around the free days:
- "Los Porfiados (The Stubborns)," through November 29. Chilean studio gt2P has filled the Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza with 14 inflatable sculptures. The piazza is part of the Piano expansion and is the most visible part of the centennial from Peachtree. The November 18 Access for All day is the last free day before it closes.
- "I SPY! Walter Wick's Hidden Wonders," through January 3. The High calls it the largest survey of Wick's work to date, with rarely seen works and three-dimensional models alongside the familiar search-and-find images.
- "Martin Puryear: Nexus," through January 17. The show has more than 70 works, and the High is both its exclusive Southeast venue and its final stop. After January 17, it closes for good rather than moving to another city.
- "Photography as a Way of Life: Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan," through February 7. Another exclusive Southeast showing, drawn from the Princeton University Art Museum and its Minor White Archive.
- "Paper Trees," through February 21.
The centennial's second act opens in February. "Future Work: Preserving the Legacy of Art," a behind-the-scenes look at conservation, runs February 12 through May 16. "Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction," with more than 50 works, runs February 19 through May 16. "Doris Derby: A Civil Rights Journey" follows from March 19 through August 1. The High notes that its exhibition schedule is subject to change.
November 14, When Both Edges Light Up
On the opposite side of Ansley Park, the Atlanta Botanical Garden is in its own fall season. Scarecrows in the Garden runs through November 1, and the Great Pumpkin-Carving Festival falls on October 22.
The two sides of the neighborhood come together on Saturday, November 14. That night, Garden Lights, Holiday Nights opens at 1345 Piedmont Avenue and runs through January 10, 2027. On the same date, the Alliance Theatre opens "A Christmas Carol," which runs through December 27, and its family show "Knock, Knock" begins a run through December 23. The Botanical Garden lies along Ansley Park's eastern side and the Woodruff Arts Center along its western side, so both holiday seasons begin on the same night within walking distance.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra fills in the weeks that follow at the same arts center. "Fauré's Requiem" plays November 12 through 15, the same weekend as the holiday openings. Then come "Elf in Concert" on November 28 and 29, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on December 9, "Christmas with the ASO" from December 10 through 13, and Handel's "Messiah" on December 17, according to the ASO's holiday announcement. "Christmas with the ASO" also overlaps with December 13, the day of the free museum Sunday and the artisan market.
For dinner after any of these nights, three openings from this summer are nearby. Rough Draft Atlanta reported that Chef Anish Nair's family-style Indian restaurant Pataaka opened August 22 at 1020 Spring Street, in Spring Quarter's Sora tower. Sozou, a Japanese restaurant serving sushi and robatayaki, opened at the same address. Botánico Cocina & Social Club, which the AJC listed among August's openings, is at 1106 Crescent Avenue.
Three dates carry the most this season. November 18 is the last free day before the piazza sculptures close. November 14 opens both the garden lights and the Alliance holiday season. December 13 brings a free museum Sunday, an artisan market a block away and a symphony holiday program on the same campus.
The architects on the October 29 walking tour shaped the stretch of Peachtree that Ansley Park's own historic houses face. If the centennial has you thinking about the design history of your own street, or about how a distinctive Ansley Park home should be presented when the time comes, Debra Johnston would welcome the conversation. Let's Connect.
