High Museum Summer Exhibits (wednesdays)
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Fri., Apr. 11 - Sun., Nov. 2
CRITIC’S PICK: Kim Chong Hak - Painter of Seoraksan, High Museum - Making its debut at the High before touring nationwide, Kim Chong Hak’s exhibition features more than seventy works that span the length of his career, presenting a type of artistic endeavor rarely seen outside his native South Korea; in his homeland Kim is popularly known as ‘the painter of Mount Seorak’ - the highest peak in the Taebaek mountain range. At Mount Seorak, Kim “forged a physical, spiritual and emotional relationship to the Korean landscape inflected by his generation’s collective memories of colonization, war, geopolitical conflict and economic crisis,” says Michael Rooks, a senior curator at the High. According to the museum, Kim’s work “reasserts the expressive potency of mountain imagery in traditional East Asian art while also demonstrating the influence of international movements of the 1970s and 1980s such as neo-expressionism and other strains of figurative painting.” - Kevin C. Madigan
CRITIC’S PICK: Ezrom Legae: Beasts, High Museum: The late South African
draughtsmen, sculptor, and teacher Ezrom Legae gained prominence during the apartheid era and extended his activism against the regime after its conclusion. “I will continue to talk about things as I see them,” Legae once told an interviewer. “People can change, but masters cannot. Change doesn’t happen overnight”. Legae created figures, heads and animals and worked with oil, conté crayons, charcoal, bronze, clay and mixed media; ‘Beasts’ is his first major museum exhibition in the United States. His depictions of animals are described as covert representations of apartheid’s players and impact. - Kevin C. Madigan
Fri., Jun. 13 - Sun., Jan. 4
CRITIC’S PICK: Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing, High Museum:~~ The New Vision movement that began a century ago is being presented at the High via 100 photographers - Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham and László Moholy-Nagy among them. In addition, contemporary artists such as Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell will demonstrate the impact of the movement on subsequent generations. According to the museum, New Vision photographers were known to use experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions featuring odd angles and uncommon viewpoints, leading to surrealism and constructivism.
“This exhibition provides an opportunity to illuminate photographers’ creativity and innovative practices, all inspired by the progression of the medium in the 1920s and '30s,” says the museum’s Art Director Rand Suffolk. “Many of the works are rarely on view, so it will be an exciting experience for visitors to see them and learn about photographers’ abilities as they reflect reality while experimenting with technique and perspective.” Maria L. Kelly, the High’s assistant curator of photography, added, “The movements and happenings of a century ago are akin to those of today and those shown in the exhibition. There remains a desire for alternative ways to see and approach the world through art, and particularly through photography.” — Kevin C. Madigan
Mar. 7 – Sun., Aug. 10
CRITIC’S PICK: Ryoji Ikeda: Data-verse, High Museum - Ryoji Ikeda, born in Japan in 1966, is a preeminent electronic composer and media artist. The High is presenting the U.S. debut of Ikeda’s triad of vast, immersive light and sound installations that are the culmination of two decades of research “and reflects upon the progressive digitalization of an integrated global society.” Included in the show are a series of 45 monitors that take apart, analyze and recombine information in what is known as “data-verse.”“Ryoji Ikeda’s decades-long exploration of data - from sequences of alphanumeric symbols to collections of images of macro and microcosms - is more relevant than ever when data-driven decisions are precipitously changing the way people relate to the world,” says Michael Rooks, the museum’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art. “His work across sonic and visual platforms will invite our audiences to rethink conventional relationships between sound and image in our tech-saturated lives.” - Kevin C. Madigan
From the venue:
Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing
Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America, and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterized by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favored extreme angles and unusual viewpoints.
This exhibition, uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s robust photography collection, will trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham, and Moholy-Nagy will be complemented by a multitude of works by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.
Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan
The High is organizing the first American museum exhibition featuring the work of Kim Chong Hak (born 1937, Sinuiju, Korea), a master painter from South Korea popularly known as “the painter of Mount Seorak” — the highest peak in the country’s Taebaek mountain range. With more than seventy works, including new acquisitions from the High’s collection, the exhibition will span the arc of Kim’s mature career and present an aspect of Korean art in the late twentieth century little known outside of South Korea.
Having first worked as an abstract painter in the 1960s, Kim ultimately rejected the adoption of Western-style abstraction, which he viewed as a response to national melancholy brought on by previous decades of hardship and deprivation. In the late 1970s, he settled in Gangwon Province, eastern South Korea, home of Mount Seorak. There he sought out an alternative artistic discourse, moving away from the monochromatic painting popular in Korea at that time toward his unabashedly expressive style. He has since dedicated his life and work to interpreting the environs of Mount Seorak, developing an artistic and emotional attunement to the natural world during decades of self-imposed isolation in the mountains.
Ezrom Legae: Beasts
This is the first major museum exhibition in the United States for celebrated South African artist Ezrom Legae (1938–1999). After apartheid was established, many artists in South Africa contended with its corresponding oppression and bodily violence by presenting the human figure in animal form or abstracting it. This exhibition focuses on Legae’s own bestial compositions, featuring more than thirty drawings of contorted and anguished creatures, each imaginative studies and explorations of form and metaphors articulating the artist’s political consciousness. The exhibition features drawings from 1967 to 1996, foregrounding the 1970s and 1990s, each groundbreaking periods in South African political history. Amid mounting unrest and anti-apartheid protests in the 1970s, such as the Soweto uprisings, activists and civilians endured increased violence, exile, and imprisonment, often without trial and including solitary confinement. This period is considered Legae’s most prolific, in which he produced pencil, ink, and charcoal depictions of animals as covert representations of apartheid’s players and impact. The artist produced substantially less until the 1990s, when he reemerged during South Africa’s political transition with drawings addressing the end of apartheid and lingering concerns regarding racism and poverty. Legae’s beasts exemplify the ways artists use coded visual languages to subvert and endure tyranny.
Ryoji Ikeda: data-verse
Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966, Gifu, Japan; active Paris and Kyoto) is one of the world’s leading composers and media artists. In this exhibition, the High will present the US debut of data-verse, Ikeda’s trilogy of monumental, immersive light and sound installations that represents more than two decades of research by the artist and reflects upon the progressive digitalization of an integrated global society. The exhibition will also premiere new work alongside existing works, including data gram, a series of eighteen monitors that take apart, analyze, and recombine information in data-verse.
Ikeda’s immersive video projections, which will be presented floor-to-ceiling onto the walls of the museum’s largest exhibition space, feature visualizations of data extracted from mathematical theories and the study of quantum physics. His more recent work, including data-verse, incorporates open-source imagery from institutions such as NASA, CERN, and the Human Genome Project.
exhibit page here
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.
High Museum Summer Exhibits (wednesdays) | 05/28/2025 10:00 AM