[10] As part of the 1996 Summer Olympics, the museum originally considered hosting a gallery curated by William Arnett but eventually opted to feature an exhibit called Rings: Five Passions in World Art, themed around five emotions: love, joy, awe, anguish, and triumph.

Highlights of the collection include works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Claude Monet, Martin Johnson Heade, Dorothea Lange, Clarence John Laughlin, and Chuck Close.

The heart and soul of the African art collection consists of extraordinary examples of masks and figurative sculptures, enriched by exceptionally fine textiles, beadwork, metalwork, and ceramics.

It features the renowned Virginia Carroll Crawford Collection—the most comprehensive survey of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American decorative arts in the southeastern United States—with important works by Alexander Roux, Herter Brothers, Tiffany & Co., Marquand & Co., and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The collection’s international contemporary design holdings recently have expanded with the addition of significant works by Joris Laarman Lab, Jaime Hayon, Ron Arad, and nendo.

The High’s holdings of more than 1,000 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper span the 1300s through the 1900s and trace the development of religion, scientific discovery, and social change through the lens of the continent’s visual culture.

Since then, the High’s European collection has grown to represent most major art movements and styles, exemplified by paintings and sculptures of such masters as Nicolas Tournier, Guercino (Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well), Jan Breughel the Elder, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (The Burial of Atala), Camille Corot, Jean-Joseph Carriès (Sleeping Faun), and Auguste Rodin (Eternal Spring).

The High’s significant European print holdings, displayed on a rotating basis, include work ranging from Albrecht Dürer’s sixteenth-century engravings to a complete edition of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Elles portfolio of lithographs.

This collection is especially rich in artworks by Southern and African American artists and features the largest groups of work by Bill Traylor, Howard Finster, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Thornton Dial held by any museum.

Modern and contemporary art at the High traces the development of innovative visual languages since 1945 that have influenced how people perceive, understand, and interpret the world, its histories, and human experience.

Spanning the very beginnings of the medium in the 1840s to the present, the High’s collection has particular strengths in American modernist and documentary traditions from the mid-twentieth century as well as current contemporary trends.

The photography collection maintains a strong base of pictures related to the American South and situates this work within a global context that is both regionally relevant and internationally significant.

The High owns one of the largest collections of photographs of the civil rights movement and some of the country’s strongest monographic collections of photographs by Eugene Atget, Dawoud Bey, Isla Bing, Wynn Bullock, Lucinda Bunnen, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Walker Evans, Leonard Freed, Evelyn Hofer, Clarence John Laughlin, Abelardo Morell, and Peter Sekaer.

Since 1996, the High's distinctive "Picturing the South" initiative has commissioned established and emerging photographers to produce work inspired by the area's geographical and cultural landscape.

Past participants include Sally Mann, Dawoud Bey, Emmet Gowin, Alex Webb, Alec Soth, Richard Misrach, Kael Alford and Debbie Fleming Caffery, whose commissions have all been added to the High's permanent collection.

[24] During the tenure of director Michael E. Shapiro between 2000 and 2014, the museum nearly doubled the number of works in its permanent collection, acquiring important paintings by 19th and 20th century and contemporary artists.

[27] The High has been featured as a location in several popular films and television shows, including The Resident (as Chastain Park Memorial Hospital), What to Expect When You're Expecting, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (as the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum), Manhunter (as Lecktor's prison), Black Panther (as the Museum of Great Britain), Red Band Society, and The Divergent Series films Insurgent and Allegiant (as the former Erudite Headquarters).