Atlanta History Center

Join us for the Metro Atlanta Regional #2 Competition where school champions from around the metro area will compete for a place at the State Finals Competition held on March 17th at Atlanta History Center. This event is free and open for the public.

Cost: Free

Join Atlanta History Center for an evening with culinary historian and author Adrian Miller. Miller’s first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time won the James Beard Foundation Award for Scholarship and Reference in 2014. His second book, The President’s K...

Cost: $5-$10

In the later part of the 19th century, Hugh Mangum was an itinerant portraitist working in North Carolina and Virginia during the rise of Jim Crow. His clientele was both racially and economically diverse. His forgotten glass plate negatives were discovered in the 1970s in a barn slated for demoliti...

Cost: Free-$10

Join us for the Metro Atlanta Regional #1 Competition where school champions from around the metro area will compete for a place at the State Finals Competition on March 17th at Atlanta History Center. This event is free and open for the public.

Cost: Free

Among this year’s highlights is a performance of Walking Through the Valley written by Addae Moon, Atlanta History Center’s Director of Museum Theatre. Set in 1963, a young activist is asked by the "powers that be” to alter the language in a speech he’s written for what will become an historic event...

Cost: Free

Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War—a conflict that opened colon...

Cost: Free-$10

The fourth and final year of the Civil War was, by any measure, one of the greatest turning points in American history. By the spring of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln knew that decisive Union successes on the battlefield would be necessary for his reelection in the fall. Yet the war had entered a ...

Cost: Free-$10

Sarah came to Atlanta History Center as a consultant in 2011, which led to her current position as Vice President of Goizueta Gardens and Living Collections. Atlanta History Center’s Goizueta Gardens are 33-acres of cultivated gardens and preserved native forest that immerse visitors in Atlanta’s hi...

Cost: Free

Visitors of all ages will learn about and experience a Day of the Dead festival. Guests enjoy traditional dancing, crafts, and authentic Mexican food and entertainment. View a display of altars honoring lost family and friends that are decorated with flowers, favorite foods, and gifts.

Cost: Free

The Fulton County 4-H Film Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings in which youth write, direct, and film their own 4-H newscast. The club is open to youth in 4th–8th grades.

Cost: Free

Carol Reese is an Extension Horticulture Specialist, a nationally-known speaker, blending equal parts gardening knowledge, natural lore, and quirky humor. After finishing her B.S. and M.S. in Horticulture at Mississippi State University, she taught classes in plant materials and landscape design. ...

Cost: Free

The Fulton County 4-H Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings, community service projects, leadership training, and other opportunities. Activities include shooting sports, judging teams, public speaking competitions, weekend trips, state-wide summer camps at Rock Eagle, and more. Mon...

Cost: Free

Expect the unexpected as night falls across Atlanta History Center’s 33-acre campus. A witch and assorted ghouls take over Smith Family Farm, while wizards work up magic potions outside Swan House. Meanwhile, a vampire saloon in Swan Woods has scares on tap, and a long-shuttered hospital will be hau...

Cost: $10-$20

Join us for our popular family program—Haunted Halloween. Before the public program begins, members will enjoy exclusive crafts and games and early access to trick or treating.

Cost: Free

At the Cherokee Garden Library’s fall lecture—in partnership with The Garden Conservancy—Deborah Nevins’ talk will feature the work of her New York-based landscape design firm, Deborah Nevins & Associates, including examples of the firm’s purpose to go beyond solely being beautiful in their commitme...

Cost: $25

From the Pulitzer Prize winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation’s foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time. The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the s...

Cost: Free-$10

Alice Wright is stuck. After a whirlwind romance, she agrees to marry the handsome Bennett Van Cleve, leaving her native England behind for a new life in Kentucky. But soon after arriving, Alice grows disenchanted by her cold husband and overbearing father-in-law, not to mention the unfamiliar cultu...

Cost: $30-$35

It’s going to be a boo-ti-ful day! Grab your costume and strut you way around the museum in our annual costume parade. Each Magic Monday has a unique monthly theme designed for toddlers and preschoolers. Using our sprawling 33-acre campus as inspiration, we create fun opportunities to enrich youngst...

Cost: Free-$6.50

Atlanta History Center Midtown invites you to come party on our front lawn right at 10th & Peachtree. We love our community and we want to celebrate Atlanta's traditions together. There's no better place to take in the annual Atlanta Pride Parade than in the heart of Midtown! We'll have colorful s...

Cost: Museum Admission

Having played host to the A-list and beau monde from Atlanta to Park Avenue to Beverly Hills, Alex Hitz is a consummate entertainer and bon vivant—who can really cook. Elegance, comfort, and wit (and always a little decadence) suffuse every detail of every delightful and delicious occasion. Defying ...

Cost: $25-$30

In the late 1830s, the city we call Atlanta was born under a different name at the termination of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Today, Atlanta is the home to the world’s busiest airport. How did this transformation take place? Spend the day with us as we connect the past to the future. Hear sto...

Cost: Free-$8.50

The Fulton County 4-H Film Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings in which youth write, direct, and film their own 4-H newscast. The club is open to youth in 4th–8th grades.

Cost: Free

Operation BBQ Relief was founded in May 2011 in response to a need for relief efforts in tornado-stricken Joplin, Missouri, a community of about 50,000 residents. Volunteers from competition barbecue teams from eight states answered the need to help feed displaced families, police, fire, National Gu...

Cost: $25-$30

The Fulton County 4-H STEM Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings focusing on a wide variety of STEM topics including 3D printing, engineering, and environmental science. The club is open to youth in 4th–8th grades.

Cost: Free

Shannon Currey is the Marketing Director for Hoffman Nursery, a wholesale nursery in North Carolina specializing in ornamental and native grasses. She began her career as a social scientist, but changed fields in 2003 to pursue horticulture. At North Carolina State University, she trained in landsca...

Cost: Free

The Fulton County 4-H Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings, community service projects, leadership training, and other opportunities. Activities include shooting sports, judging teams, public speaking competitions, weekend trips, state-wide summer camps at Rock Eagle, and more. Mon...

Cost: Free

Educators, join us for a free daytime event just for you!

Meet our education team and learn about our school tours, outreach programs and educator resources.

During this special event:

Get a sneak peek at our new The Battle of Atlanta cyclorama school tour, Stories After the Battle: The Cyclor...

Cost: Free w/ current school ID

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched ...

Cost: Free-$10

Come out and explore the most diverse square mile in America—Clarkston! In August, we’re heading to the Clarkston Community Center to learn more about the unique history and culture of the area. Known by many names and nicknames during its history, including New Siding and Angora Heights (referring ...

Cost: Free W/ RSVP

Atlanta History Center proudly welcomes back ATL Collective for our third annual partnership celebrating the best of our city's music. On August 10th, we will recreate R.E.M.'s eighth album, Automatic for the People. The evening includes cash bars, tasty barbecue for purchase, and full access to A...

Cost: $40

In Whole Hog Barbecue, Sam Jones and Daniel Vaughn recount the history of the Skylight Inn which opened in 1947, and share step by step instructions for cooking a whole hog at home.

 

Cost: Free-$10

The Fulton County 4-H Club at Atlanta History Center offers monthly meetings, community service projects, leadership training, and other opportunities. Activities include shooting sports, judging teams, public speaking competitions, weekend trips, state-wide summer camps at Rock Eagle, and more. M...

Cost: Free

As the Civil Rights Movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college but is instead sentenced to a juvenile refor...

Cost: $35-$40

Atlanta History Center Midtown invites you to come party on our front lawn right at 10th & Peachtree Street.

Join us as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peachtree Road Race—come cheer on the runners and relax after the race. 

Cost: Free

Ages 6-11.

Find out how you can make a difference and spend a week celebrating dedicated changemakers of the 20 and 21 centuries. Develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, find inspiration, challenge the odds, and explore life through action and purpose.

History comes to life...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Toward the beginning of Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky.  The rest of Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir is in a way a...

Cost: $5-$10

Ages 6-11.

Find out how you can make a difference and spend a week celebrating dedicated changemakers of the 20 and 21 centuries. Develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, find inspiration, challenge the odds, and explore life through action and purpose.

History comes to life...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Ages 6-11.

Find out how you can make a difference and spend a week celebrating dedicated changemakers of the 20 and 21 centuries. Develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, find inspiration, challenge the odds, and explore life through action and purpose.

History comes to life...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

President Theodore Roosevelt, had accused his former friend and ally, now turned rival, William Barnes of political corruption. Barnes responded by suing Roosevelt for an enormous sum that could have financially devastated him. The spectacle of Roosevelt defending himself in a lawsuit captured the i...

Cost: Free-$10

Ages 6-11.

Find out how you can make a difference and spend a week celebrating dedicated changemakers of the 20 and 21 centuries. Develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, find inspiration, challenge the odds, and explore life through action and purpose.

History comes to life...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Ages 6-11.

Find out how you can make a difference and spend a week celebrating dedicated changemakers of the 20 and 21 centuries. Develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, find inspiration, challenge the odds, and explore life through action and purpose.

History comes to life...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Fierce fighters such as Joan of Arc, Grace O’Malley, the Trung Sisters, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla take a stand! Discover the history behind these iconic defenders and experience the world through their eyes!   History comes to life as Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past throu...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice President Andrew Johnson became “the Accidental President,” it was a dangerous time in America.  With profound insights and making use of extensive research, Brenda Wineapple dramatically evokes this pivotal period in American history, when the countr...

Cost: Free-$10

Fierce fighters such as Joan of Arc, Grace O’Malley, the Trung Sisters, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla take a stand! Discover the history behind these iconic defenders and experience the world through their eyes!   History comes to life as Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past throu...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Fierce fighters such as Joan of Arc, Grace O’Malley, the Trung Sisters, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla take a stand! Discover the history behind these iconic defenders and experience the world through their eyes!   History comes to life as Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past throu...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, Life of David Hockney offers an insightful overview of a painter whose art is as accessible as it is compelling, and whose passion to create has never been deterred by heartbreak or illness or loss. Catherine Cusset was born in Paris in 1963.She is the a...

Cost: $10 for not-yet members, $5 for members

Fierce fighters such as Joan of Arc, Grace O’Malley, the Trung Sisters, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla take a stand! Discover the history behind these iconic defenders and experience the world through their eyes!   History comes to life as Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past throu...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

Fierce fighters such as Joan of Arc, Grace O’Malley, the Trung Sisters, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla take a stand! Discover the history behind these iconic defenders and experience the world through their eyes!   History comes to life as Atlanta History Center summer campers explore the past throu...

Cost: $250-$300 Per Week

AGES 9-14 YEARS Channel your inner Frankenstein and explore creature creation and world building in this Sci-Fi and Fantasy writing camp! Learn techniques and tools that will help you develop well-rounded characters living in complex worlds. Discover the power of imagination and craft a story ...

Cost: $325 - $375 per week

Barbecue: It’s America in a mouthful. The story of barbecue touches almost every aspect of our history. It involves indigenous culture, the colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, the settling of the West, the coming of immigrants, the Great Migration, the rise of the automobile, the expansion of subu...

Cost: Free - $10

The Atlanta History Center and World War II Foundation host a special evening to honor the courage displayed on June 6, 1944 to liberate German-occupied France (and later Europe) from Nazi control. Author Rick Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner in history and journalism, will be interviewed about D...

Cost: Free

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murd...

Cost: Free - $10

When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in winter 1840, he is on no one's shortlist to be president. Rough and reticent, he’s a country lawyer lacking money and manners, living above a dry goods shop, but with a gift for oratory. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with a tireless in...

Cost: Free - $10

National Public Gardens Week is a celebration of America’s public gardens, bringing national exposure to the importance of vibrant, relevant gardens committed to community enrichment and environmental responsibility through community engagement, sustainable practices and conversation. Access to Go...

Cost: Free with Admission

Oh, the places you’ll go during the Planes, Trains & Automobiles program! Little ones explore the many modes of transportation and enjoy an immersive experience on our fully restored, larger than life Texas locomotive.  

Cost: $5.50-$6.50

Most people know Hedy Lamarr as one of the most glamourous Oscar-nominated movie stars of the 1940s, but the greatest legacy she may have left behind is her groundbreaking contribution as a scientist. Lemarr was an avid inventor and the person behind advances in communication technology that led to ...

Cost: Free - $10

In rural north Georgia two decades after the Civil War, 13-year-old Lulu Hurst reaches high into her father’s bookshelf and pulls out an obscure book, The Truth of Mesmeric Influence. Deemed gangly and undesirable, Lulu wants more than a lifetime of caring for her disabled baby brother, Leo, with wh...

Cost: Free - $10

Drue Campbell’s life is adrift – she’s out of a job and down on her luck. Life doesn’t seem to be getting any better when her estranged father, Brice Campbell, a flamboyant personal injury attorney, shows up at her mother’s funeral after a 20-year absence. Worse, he’s remarried – to Drue’s eighth gr...

Cost: $35 - $40

Pop into the History Center for a tasty breakfast featuring Bomb Biscuits and B’s Cracklin’ Barbecue and stay for curator-led tours of Barbecue Nation exhibition. Tickets are $10, and include breakfast, coffee, and museum admission.

Cost: $10

Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work! His work has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He also speaks frequently about creativity in the digi...

Cost: Free - $10

America in the antebellum years was a deeply troubled country, divided by partisan gridlock and ideological warfare, angry voices in the streets and the statehouses, furious clashes over race and immigration, and a growing chasm between immense wealth and desperate poverty. The Civil War that foll...

Cost: Free - $10

Plein air painting produces art from life “in open air” across the Atlanta History Center’s Goizueta Gardens. The public is invited to observe as esteemed contemporary impressionist artists across the United States create finished paintings before your eyes. In its fourth year, the Olmsted Plain Air...

Cost: Free with Admission

The bestselling author of American Housewife is back with a fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady. Helen Ellis has a mantra: "If you...

Cost: Free - $10

With millions of documents available online, most of us are able to flesh out at least part of our family tree.  But often the records you need aren’t available online and sometimes you just want to walk where your ancestors walked. Join Sue VerHoef, Director of Oral History and Genealogy at the Atl...

Cost: $10 - $15

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago in Paris and became confidantes. Now El...

Cost: Free - $10

In celebration of Earth Day, join us as we explore science, nature, and history in the “City in a Forest”. Learn about our gardens, participate in a scavenger hunt, develop your own practices, and explore how we are personally responsible for keeping our Earth healthy for generations to come.  Adm...

Cost: Free - $8.50

When Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr met on a dueling ground in July 1804, they chose the same attending physician: David Hosack. Family doctor and friend to Hamilton and Burr, Hosack is today a shadowy figure at the edge of a famous duel, the great achievements of his life forgotten. In 1801, on ...

Cost: $25