The High: Atlanta's Art Museum, Born from a Ten-Dollar Gift

In nineteen oh five a group of Atlanta women convinced a Fulton County court to charter the Atlanta Art Association, with a mission to build a museum and an art school for the city. For two decades they collected works without a permanent home.

The turning point came in nineteen twenty-six, when Harriet Wilson High, widow of department store owner Joseph Madison High, transferred her Tudor-style mansion on Peachtree Street to the association for ten dollars. The association took the High name in memory of her husband, and the High Museum of Art was born. The collection outgrew the mansion by nineteen fifty-five, moved into a new building next door, and then in nineteen eighty-three moved again into the current structure designed by architect Richard Meier, a striking white complex that has become one of the most recognized museum buildings in the American South.