ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art continued to strategically expand its collection in 2024 with 591 new acquisitions, including a playscape model sculpture by American designer Isamu Noguchi, a painting by Nigerian modernist Ben Enwonwu, a mixed media work by contemporary artist Hank Willis Thomas and a painting by American modernist Raymond Jonson. This year, the High also acquired an Impressionist painting by Alfred Sisley and works by leading quilt artist Carolyn L. Mazloomi and American photographer Catherine Opie.

“In 2024, our curators intentionally and thoughtfully acquired artworks that build upon strengths in our existing holdings and also offer new pathways for deeper audience engagement, two of the hallmark goals of our collecting program,” said Director Rand Suffolk.

Chief Curator Kevin W. Tucker added, “These acquisitions reflect the significance and range of the High’s curatorial program and our commitment to excellence, distinctiveness, and building collections of diverse artistic voices. We look forward to sharing these works with our audiences in future exhibitions and gallery installations.”

Major 2024 acquisitions include:

African Art:

Ben Enwonwu
Nigerian, 1917-1994
“Agbogho mmuo,” 1977
Oil on canvas
38 5/8 x 32 5/16 inches
Purchase with African Art Acquisition Fund for Modernists, 2024.1

Regarded as being among the first African artists to gain international acclaim, Odinigwe Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu MBE (1917-1994), professionally known as Ben Enwonwu, was a Nigerian painter and sculptor known for a distinct modernist language that spoke to both his Igbo culture and a new Nigerian national identity. Masquerade dancers appear in Enwonwu’s paintings throughout his career, and “Agbogho mmuo” (1977) is a superlative example. Different from earlier versions featuring several masquerade dancers, the work depicts a single spotlit performer against a dark background, with movement suggested by frenetic brushstrokes. This acquisition, the High’s first by Enwonwu, is part of the African Art department’s ongoing initiative to build a leading collection of African master artists, particularly from Nigeria, one of the High’s regional areas of expertise, and to provide a more comprehensive African art history.

American Art:

Raymond Jonson
American, 1891-1982
“City Forces,” 1932
Oil on canvas
37 x 68 inches
Purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable, 2024.11

Raymond Jonson was one of the key artistic figures active in New Mexico beginning in 1924, when he cofounded the Transcendentalist Painting Group alongside Emil Bisttram. This work is the first in a series of paintings that Jonson began in 1932 after visiting New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. (Two of the later works are in other museum collections, three are in private collections, and one has an unknown location.) In addition to capturing the vigor and dynamism of industry and urban life, this series is significant for being the last objective paintings of Jonson’s career, as he subsequently moved completely to spiritually infused nonobjective painting. “City Forces” adds to the High’s holdings of works by lesser-known interwar modernist artists including Joseph Stella, Lawrence Lebduska and Hale Woodruff.

Decorative Arts and Design:

Isamu Noguchi
American, 1904-1988
“Play Mountain,” 1933
Plaster
4 x 26 x 29 5/8 inches

Purchase with funds from the Decorative Arts and Design Endowment, 2024.175
“Play Mountain” is American artist Isamu Noguchi’s first playground design and a fine early example of his skill as a modeler of plastic form; it is also, in its own way, an architectural maquette: the first foray of a young, tremendously talented sculptor looking to expand his creative reach into larger-scale and landscape design. Created in 1933, as the Great Depression continued to deepen, “Play Mountain” emerged from Noguchi’s profound personal frustration with the limits of artistic modernism to make meaningful impacts in the lives of those struggling with the global economic downturn. Opting to imagine a solution on the scale of a New York City block, “Play Mountain” represents a swing-for-the-fences, profoundly moving attempt to leverage design for a better world. Nearly four decades after his first playground design, Noguchi finally saw one of those plans realized with “Playscapes” (1975-1976), commissioned by the museum and located nearby in midtown Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. Significant for its connection to the High’s past, this acquisition will also be an important addition to the High’s major Noguchi retrospective, currently in development.

European Art:

Alfred Sisley
(British, 1839-1899)
“Le verger à Moret-sur-Loing, printemps” (“The Orchard in Moret-sur-Loing, Spring), ca. 1891
Oil on canvas
18 1/4 x 21 5/8 in.
Doris and Shouky Shaheen Collection, 2024.562

Throughout his over 30-year career, British artist Alfred Sisley remained dedicated to painting en plein air, capturing richly colored Impressionist landscapes in France and Great Britain. After living for many years in the Parisian suburbs, Sisley moved to the medieval town of Moret-sur-Loing, located at the confluence of the Loing and Seine rivers, where he would remain until his death. Only exhibited once, in 1977, this painting has been held in a private collection since 1985. It joins five other works by Sisley in the High’s holdings, including four paintings gifted by the Shaheens in 2019 and one lithograph.

Folk and Self-Taught Art:

Carolyn L. Mazloomi
American, born 1948
“Ode to Harriet Powers: Mother of African American Quilting,” 2024
Poly-cotton fabric, cotton thread, cotton batting, and fabric paint
67 x 61 inches
Purchase with funds from Black Quilts and Contemporary Art Centennial Initiative, 2024.204

Acquired as part of the High’s ongoing quilt collecting initiative, this recent quilt by Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi is especially meaningful for the High, both as the first work by this leading quilt artist and scholar to enter the museum’s collection and as a tribute to Harriet Powers, the Georgia native who is widely regarded as the godmother of African American story quilting. Included in Mazloomi’s debut show this year at the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York, the quilt is a rare example of Mazloomi’s blending of colorful fabric into her typically black-and-white palette. The only known surviving quilts by Powers are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and this quilt includes MFA Boston’s example—as redrawn by Mazloomi—as its background.

Modern and Contemporary Art:

Hank Willis Thomas
American, born 1976
“Freedom,” 2021
Mixed media including United States flags
89 x 207 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches
Purchase with funds from Black Quilts and Contemporary Art Centennial Initiative and David C. Driskell African American Art Acquisition Fund, 2024.45

Composed of upcycled American flags, “Freedom” by Hank Willis Thomas may be considered a painting, an assemblage or a quilt. It operates on several different levels as craft, abstraction, Op Art and as an artwork at the intersection of conceptual art practice, politics and anti-racist discourse. Thomas’ work significantly augments the High’s comprehensive collection of Black quilts and provides a powerful response to self-taught artist Jessie Telfair’s well-known “Freedom Quilt” (ca. 1975) in the High’s holdings. The mazelike configuration of the word “freedom” in Thomas’ quilt powerfully alludes to the circuitous and uncertain network of routes taken by enslaved African Americans to escape for freedom in the North as well as to the subsequent struggle for racial equality and civil rights in the United States.

Photography:

Catherine Opie
American, born 1961
“Self-portrait/Cutting contact sheet,” 1993/2024
Pigmented inkjet print
Purchase with funds from the LGBTQIA+ Photography Centennial Initiative, 2024.51

Catherine Opie is celebrated for her carefully composed studio portraits of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals. This self-portrait, presented as a contact sheet, features a childlike drawing of a house and two women stick figures carved into Opie’s back, depicting the progression of the cuts over time. The work offers a sense of the painful longing she felt for a family of her own and a perspective on the durational process of creating the striking self-portrait. As the museum begins to actively build its holdings of work made by LGBTQIA+-identifying photographers, this acquisition is an important early step and is the first work by this renowned artist to enter the collection.