Visit to the High Museum

As part of my birthday weekend festivities, Candace and I decided to take advantage of the High Museum's (my new keyboardist/vocalist Emily is the web designer for their site!) generous free entrance, which is offered every first weekend of the month to all Fulton County residents. This was good because there were at least a few new exhibits at the museum, but not enough to entice me to pay full admission. The four most notable (and newest) exhibits were as follows: Monet's Water Lillies, Misrach's On the Beach, a selection of architect Anthony Ames' work, and a somewhat small collection borrowed from the Louvre.

Despite being the focal point at the museum right now, the Monet collection only featured four of his paintings (on loan from NYC's MoMA), and although they were large paintings, it was hard not to feel a little misled. Richard Misrach's beach-themed photography exhibit was easily the most striking, but I'm generally not a huge fan of artistic photography, so it wasn't my favorite thing on display. That honor belongs to the Anthony Ames collection...all of which was in a sort of modernist/art deco style in Miami-style pastels (despite the fact that he's a local architect). Now, although Miami's interpretation of art deco is kinda unappetizing, I would still love to have this guy build my house someday.

Finally, the Louvre exhibit was pretty mediocre (at least with the exception of this great painting of Dante's Pandemonium), because the collection largely consisted of artifacts (in which I have no interest) and smallish etchings, so we quickly passed through. To be fair, I've been to the Louvre, and I wasn't really that into it...I'm much more into modern art museums and/or museums that only have paintings/photography (i.e. not relics and artifacts).

All in all though, I would have to say that my expectations were exceeded, but unfortunately, that's not saying a whole lot, as I've come to think of the Atlanta High Museum as one of the worst museums I've ever seen. Oh well...