Image: High Museum of Art, New York
The High Museum of Art is using ‘New Acquisitions: Photography’ to trace both the growth of its own collection and the broader development of photography as an art form. On view June 12 through September 6, 2026, the exhibition brings together historic and contemporary works, including photographs by Dawoud Bey, Rahim Fortune, Nikita Gale, Martine Gutierrez, Richard Learoyd, Baldwin Lee, Catherine Opie, Ed Panar and Susan Worsham, among others.
According to the museum, the show reflects decades of collecting that began with its first photograph in 1973 and continued with the creation of its photography department in 1993. The exhibition is presented as a marker of that long-term effort: a way to show how the collection has expanded while also mirroring the culture and time in which the works were made. The museum says the selection includes works on view at the High for the first time.
The exhibition also underscores the idea that building a collection can itself be a creative act. Rather than presenting photography as a fixed canon, ‘New Acquisitions: Photography’ is framed around breadth—historic images, conceptual experiments, documentary work and contemporary practices appear together to show the museum’s range. That breadth is central to the High’s current photography holdings, which the museum describes as a collection that now showcases the history of the medium while remaining attentive to the social conditions and visual cultures that shaped the works.
Among the featured pieces is Charles Nègre’s ‘Cathédrale de Chartres Royal Portal’, 1857, a photogravure that documents architectural and sculptural details of the cathedral while it was being restored. The work reflects Nègre’s early role in photographing French street life and architecture and shows the medium’s nineteenth-century relationship to both observation and reproduction. The exhibition also includes Bruce Davidson’s ‘Arresting Demonstrators, Birmingham, from the Time of Change series’, 1963, which captures the civil rights era’s urgent historical atmosphere.
Several works connect the collection to African American history and to the histories of place. David Alekhuogie’s ‘Birth Home’, 2013, comes from his ‘Baptism’ series, which the museum says grew from his visit to Atlanta to study locations tied to the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home. Carolyn Drake’s ‘Elise with Snake’, from the ‘Knit Club’ series, 2019, reflects a collaboration with women quilters in Water Valley, Mississippi, while Catherine Opie’s ‘Pig Pen’, 1993, represents her carefully composed portrait practice and her attention to gay, lesbian and transgender subjects.
The exhibition also includes Matthew Brandt’s ‘Nurphar Lake WY 5’, 2013, from his ‘Lakes and Reservoirs’ series, in which he soaked photographs in water collected from the places depicted so the material itself altered the image. That work appears alongside an earlier Charles Nègre photogravure and other acquisitions to demonstrate the museum’s interest in the technical as well as thematic range of photography. The High says the show culminates years of strategic collecting and signals the future direction of the department’s acquisitions.
‘New Acquisitions: Photography’ is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and appears during a season in which the museum is also presenting other exhibitions and programs across the building. But the photography exhibition stands on its own as a survey of recent acquisitions and a snapshot of how the High is shaping its collection for the future, with works on view June 12 through September 6, 2026.
