Expanded High Museum Of Art Opened On November

The High Museum of Art opened its expanded facilities to the public on November 12, 2005, creating a vibrant "village for the arts" at the Woodruff Arts Center in Midtown Atlanta. Designed by architect Renzo Piano, three new buildings surrounding a public piazza more than double the Museum's size to 312, 000 square feet-allowing the High to display more of its growing collection, increase public programs and offer new visitor amenities to address the needs of larger and more diverse audiences.

"Renzo Piano has helped us to create a spectacular new facility that addresses the High's urban location, expanded collection and our role as the anchor for a multidisciplinary arts campus, " said Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director of the High Museum of Art. "The Museum, like Atlanta, has seen tremendous growth over the past two decades. This expansion will transform the High
into a lively, year-round destination for the arts."

The High and the Woodruff Arts Center surpassed their original $130-million campaign goal in November 2004-exactly one year before the opening of the expanded Museum. Due to success of fundraising efforts during the campaign, the scope of the project was expanded to include the renovation of the High's existing building as well as other owner-directed enhancements to the facility and campus. To date, the High and Woodruff Arts Center have raised $163.9 million towards a total goal of $178.4 million. During this time, the High has also raised an additional $10 million in acquisition funds to grow the permanent collection.

The 177, 000-square-foot, $109.3 million expansion of the High is accompanied by a $54.1 million upgrade of the Woodruff Arts Center. The total construction budget stands at $163.4 million. Additionally, a $15 million endowment goal has been set, bringing the budget for the entire project to $178.4 million. The expansion strengthens the High's role as the premier art museum in the Southeast and allows the Museum to better serve audiences in Atlanta and the region.

The High opened its existing critically acclaimed building designed by Richard Meier in 1983, previously housed within the Atlanta Art Association, and has since established itself among the nation's leading cultural institutions. Attendance rose to a high of 450, 000 visitors in 2005, the collection has more than doubled and in the past decade, membership has reached a high of over 41, 000 households-among the top 10 memberships of any art museum in the United States.

The High has been a catalyst for the development of the Midtown Atlanta, which has grown into a thriving, economically vital area that now encompasses nearly 17 million square feet of office space and is a destination for nearly half a million citizens each day. The High played a key role in the transformation of Midtown from a transitional neighborhood into one of the city's most robust areas.
The new High and Woodruff Arts campus creates a cultural hub where visitors can experience the finest art, music and theatre in the city. Piano's signature piazza design will open the Arts Center to the surrounding neighborhood, with outdoor seating for the new full-service restaurant, Table 1280 Restaurant and Tapas Lounge. Key design features of the new buildings include transparent glass walls on the piazza level and an array of gallery spaces to showcase the core strengths of the Museum's collection.

"Atlanta is a city in tune with nature, so in designing the High and the Woodruff Arts Center, I wanted to create a light-filled, unified campus that embraces the landscape and engages with its surroundings, " said Renzo Piano. "We set out to create a vision-a vibrant neighborhood with the arts at its core that's active seven days a week-that will invigorate the people and cultural life of the city."

Project Funding and the Capital Campaign
Over 5, 400 individuals and families in Atlanta and beyond expressed their support for the expanded High and Woodruff Arts Center through contributions to the campaign, launched in mid-1998, with gifts ranging in size from $25 to $12 million. The High Museum has raised $111.2 million of the $163.9 million in funding generated to date-of which over $51 million was contributed by the High Board of Directors. The remaining $53 million was raised by a joint Woodruff Arts Center campaign.

Lead gifts include a construction gift of $12 million from the former Chairman of the High's Board of Directors, John Wieland and his wife Sue-the largest individual gift in the Museum's history-and major donations from current Board Chairman Terry Stent and his wife Margaret, and longtime Board Member Anne Cox Chambers. The High recognized the leadership and generosity of these gifts by naming the Museum's three public buildings in their honor. The central gallery building, the largest of the new buildings, is the Susan and John Wieland Pavilion; the High's original building has been named the Stent Family Wing; and the special collections building on Arts Center Way is the Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

"The museum's Richard Meier-designed building was an investment in Atlanta that put the High on the map as a cultural institution of national significance, and it encouraged both dramatic institutional growth and local civic development, " said Terry Stent, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "Now, the High is ready to enter a new era of even more committed service, ushered in by the expansion, the innovative programming and a continuously expanding collection."

Design of the Expansion
Architects from the Genoa, Italy-based Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in collaboration with Atlantabased Lord, Aeck & Sargent, Inc., designed the High's three new buildings: the Susan and John Wieland Pavilion, the Anne Cox Chambers Wing and the Administrative Center. The Wieland Pavilion serves as the new main entrance to the Museum.

Piano's design of the Wieland Pavilion and the Anne Cox Chambers Wing features a special roof system of 1, 000 light scoops that capture northern light and filter it into the skyway galleries. These light-filled galleries house part of the Museum's modern and contemporary collection in the Wieland Pavilion and special collections in the Anne Cox Chambers Wing. Flexible space on the second floor of the Wieland Pavilion will be used for special exhibitions. On the Pavilion lobby level, visitors have access to the Museum shop, a coffee bar, a visitor concierge and an outdoor terrace-the new home for Coosje Van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg's "Balzac/Pétanque, " acquired by the High in 2002. Lower level galleries have been dedicated specifically to African art, photography, works on paper and a works on paper study center.

Piano designed the new buildings to complement and link seamlessly to the High's existing building. All three are clad in panels of aluminum to unite the complex with the Meierdesigned building's signature white enamel façade. Glassenclosed pedestrian bridges link the Wieland Pavilion to the Stent Family Wing at the lobby and skyway levels, as well as link the Pavilion to the second and third floors of the Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

In 2003, a renovation of the Meier-designed building and new glass technologies enabled the Museum to uncover skylights that had previously been hidden due to direct light penetration. The newly renovated Stent Family Wing principally houses the Museum's permanent collection, the High Café, and most notably, the Museum's new Greene Family Education Center and Greene Family Learning Gallery.

Landscape & Exterior Details
The Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in partnership with Lord, Aeck & Sargent, Inc. and Jordan, Jones & Goulding in Atlanta, created a landscape design that blends art, nature and water to create a lush outdoor environment that complements the Woodruff Arts Center buildings. The outdoor spaces showcase monumental outdoor sculpture from the Museum's collection, including Roy Lichtenstein's
"House III, " acquired by the High in 2003. Across the Sifly Piazza from the Arts Center's new restaurant, Table 1280, two water features frame the entrance to the Wieland Pavilion.
The surrounding landscape design includes 142 trees, representing 10 different species. A row of Athena elms border the south side of the Sifly Piazza and will rise to be approximately 25 feet tall, forming an overhead canopy. In addition to Athena elms, the campus features Japanese maples, crabapples, Deodar cedars, Kousa dogwoods, Sweetbay magnolias and Yoshino cherries-all providing a tapestry of blooms and foliage as they flower and change color with the seasons. Colorful Boston ivy grows along the
exterior stair walls of the Museum and on the 15th Street side of the Atlanta College of Art.

About Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1998, has designed several acclaimed art museums, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, The Menil Collection in Houston, the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and the Museum Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland. He has been praised as an architect who has the genius to meld art, architecture and advanced engineering to create some of the most exciting museums in the world. Piano's current cultural projects include: The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, The Morgan Library in New York, The New York Times building in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

About High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States. With over 11, 000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art.
The High's Media Arts department produces acclaimed annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic cinema.

About The Woodruff Arts Center
The Woodruff Arts Center is ranked among the top four arts centers in the nation. A not-for-profit center
for performing and visual arts, its campus comprises the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta College of Art, the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, Young Audiences and the 14th Street Playhouse

For more information, please visit http://www.woodruffcenter.org/ and http://www.renzopiano.com

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