High Museum of Art

Today Candace and I visited Atlanta's High Museum of Art for our first time together.

With the exception of the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit and a temporary contemporary art exhibit by Latin American artists, the rest was a bit disappointing. The permanent collection was essentially divided into two main categories: modern art and a really random assortment of traditional art of varied media. Neither of these collections was particularly exciting, and even the temporary Louvre exhibit was a bit too archeological for my tastes, despite its permanent home being the most famous museum in the world.

I generally chalk up the High's problems to two large and widespread problems with American museums in general:

1.) Americans don't go to museums, so our collections are usually lacking
2.) Unlike Europe, where every city (large and small) have a collection of museums dedicated to specific collections (i.e. archeological, traditional fine art, modern art, history, etc...), American cities usually only have one museum PERIOD, so that museum has to cover all possible bases, effectively watering down their collections to being a sort of garage-sale of art.

Regardless, I'm still glad I went, and Candace and I ended up having a nice day.