The High Museum’s Must-See Exhibits: Giants in Scale, Quilts in Spirit
Giants exhibition, photo by Diana O’Gilvie
Atlanta’s High Museum is pulling out all the stops this season with two exhibitions that demand attention. Whether you're a long-time art lover or just in town for the weekend, these collections offer something deeply moving and visually arresting. When you walk into Atlanta’s High Museum this fall, you'll find yourself face-to-face with two very different but equally captivating exhibits, Giants and Patterns in Abstraction: African American Quilts. These aren't just exhibitions, they’re emotional journeys that showcase the power of art, one through monumental paintings, the other through intricate, handcrafted quilts.
Giants. Bigger than Art, Bigger than Life
Artist Mickalene Thomas uses rhinestones, silkscreen, and glitter to celebrate the beauty of Black women. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie
Stepping into Giants feels like you’re shrinking as the art around you seems to grow in size and scope. Giants is a traveling exhibition from the Dean Collection by Swizz Beats and Alicia Keys. The exhibit brings together larger-than-life sculptures, most of which make you question the limits of human creativity. Once you enter the exhibit massive portraits of the celebrity couple, painted by Kehinde Wiley, frame the entrance. The kind that tower above you, demanding both your attention and imagination. This collection features work from internationally recognized artists like Richard Hunt, who bends metal into fluid, almost impossible shapes, and celebrated Black photographer Gordon Parks, whose images of Black people across the American South and during the Civil Rights movement catapulted him into the artistic stratosphere.
It’s not just the size that’s impressive, though. Each piece tells its own story, revealing layers of meaning as you move closer. There's this overwhelming sense of wonder as you navigate through the exhibit, moving from the industrial and stark to the almost dreamlike and organic to the powerful and iconic. It's a visceral experience. These works of art aren't just objects you observe from a distance, they pull you into their orbit.
Patterns in Abstraction. The Soul of African American Quilts
Maxine Thomas’ When They Go Low, We Go High, is an award-winning quilt featuring Michelle Obama’s portrait with a little girl looking up at her. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Patterns in Abstraction: African American Quilts takes a more intimate approach to storytelling. This exhibition is a quiet, reflective space where every stitch feels like it holds a piece of history. The quilts are as much art as they are family heirlooms, each one made by Black women artists whose work spans more than a century.
Part of the fascinating history of quilts is that they originated as more functional than artistic. In slaves’ quarters, the wind used to rip through cracks and crevices in the wintertime, making indoors cold. Inventive hands took fabric scraps like ripped jeans, socks, and hems to make quilts to hang on walls to block the wind and lay on floors as insulation.
The quilts don’t just hang on the walls, they breathe with life, tradition, and a deep sense of community. As you take in each piece, you start to notice the bold colors, the asymmetrical patterns, and the way shapes overlap and blend into each other. These quilts break all the rules of "traditional" quilting, embracing improvisation and abstraction in a way that feels modern, even avant-garde.
I couldn’t help but wonder about the stories behind them. Whose pocket square was that? Did that pink ruffle belong to a little girl? The makers of some quilts in the display were unknown, it felt bittersweet to read that on the didactic. The creator doesn’t get credit, but her work lives on. The stories attached to each stitch get seen by us.
A corduroy and denim quilt. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie
Black women have been creating quilts that hold family stories for posterity. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words” and I’d venture to say that a quilt holds family legacies together. Those legacies are as old as America itself. Many of these quilts come from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a small, historically Black community that became known for its unique, minimalist quilting style. The quilts speak to a history of resilience, where scraps of fabric, old clothes, linens, whatever was available, became works of art passed down through generations.
What’s particularly moving about Patterns in Abstraction is how the quilts reflect the African American experience without being tied to any one narrative. You see influences of African symbolism but also traces of Southern life, rural traditions, and the evolving social landscape. It’s an ever-changing tapestry, literally and figuratively.
A group of women closely examine the technique of a corduroy and denim quilt. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie
If you’ve never been to the High Museum, this is your moment. These exhibitions run through January 2025 and they’re the kind of shows that will stay with you long after you’ve left. Make a day of it, grab a coffee, and prepare to see art in a whole new light.