Giants and Georgia O'Keeffe Elevate Atlanta's High

My Paris summer was a lot of things, from amazing in terms of five-ringed and French encounters to profound for life experiences while restoring faith in many aspects of the Olympic Family, a welcome change after Rio challenges and Tokyo's pandemic left me dismayed. 

 

With an abundance of stories to share, including two drafted but unpublished posts from the final days of the torch relay and the dazzling albeit drizzly opening ceremony (and hundreds of photos and Paris 2024 micro-moment impressions to share), I've struggled to decide how to get back to blogging, procrastinating around real-life and client work since August. 

That stops now with notes on two fresh fine art exhibitions underway at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, which kindly hosted me for media previews for both options.

The must-see, worth airfare and a sleepover show "Georgia O'Keeffe: 'My New Yorks'" (through Feb. 16) gave me goosebumps. 

First arranged and unveiled at the Chicago Art Institute, the exhibition features around 100 works, including several longtime favorites by the Wisconsin-born multimedia artist as well as several "new to my eyes" works from private collections or remote museums not yet experienced. 

"This exhibition offers the wonderful opportunity to highlight this important but perhaps unrecognized period of O'Keeffe's artistic life and demonstrate how [works] exemplify her innovation as a Modernist," said High Director Rand Suffolk. 

Showstopping works include:

• Taos Pueblo, which vividly captures the New Mexico destination circa 1929, on loan from the Eiteljorg Museum of Indianapolis

• Radiator Building-Night, New York, with all its radiant shades of blue, first experienced in its home gallery Crystal Bridges of Bentonville, Ark.
  

• A Celebration, at right, featuring all the clouds about which Jonie Mitchell sang, from Seattle Art Museum

• The Shelton With Sunspots, inserted atop this blog post, featuring O'Keeffe's home and studio address atop Manhattan from which many other urban works originated, here from Chicago Art Institute

• Abstract nature scenes via From The Lake No. 1 and From The Lake No. 3 from the Des Moines Art Center and Philadelphia Museum of Art, respectively

• The massive (seven feet tall) canvas Manhattan with a Rockefeller Center-like ivory tower affixed with pink, red and lilac roses in town from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington (don't miss the delicate pencil and ink artist sketch also on view nearby)

The exhibition's rich catalog from Yale University Press, edited by Chicago Arts Institute colleagues Sarah Kelly Ohler and Annelise K. Madsen, includes essays that detail O'Keeffe's daily life in Manhattan with a skyscraper vantage point. 

Trust me, you'll thank yourself for making time to view this exhibition. 

Meanwhile, also on view through Jan. 19 the High presents "Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys." 

Like the O'Keeffe gathering, this private collection presentation -- on its only Southeast stop after debuting at the Brooklyn Museum -- features about 100 works. 

Standout works include Kehinde Wiley's floor-to-ceiling portraits of the collection's namesake owners, coastal views by Barkley L Hendricks, an untitled work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and several photos by Gordon Parks, including multiple portraits of Muhammad Ali only a few years after his Olympic feats at Rome 196o. 

Another set of monumental canvases titled "A Puzzled Revolution" by Titus Kaphar blends likenesses of Ali's knockout of Sonny Liston with riffs from other icons like the nautical crew in "Watson and the Shark." 

Across the room, be sure to spend time with "You Shouldn't Be the Prisoner of Your Own Ideas" featuring a quilt-like assemblage of used jail uniforms arranged by Hank Willis Thomas. 

And around another corner, there's a small batch of BMX bikes (a reminder of their recent addition to the Paris Olympic cycling competition) and music studio production equipment. Word!

The final gallery also features four large portraits of dancers or gymnasts resembling Simone Biles, with the exhibit bookended by another giant -- the collection's largest -- Wiley canvas. 

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver