High Museum of Art--page 1 of four pages

Richard Meier
1983



Please note that I took some of these photographs in February 2002 (identified as MAS) and my brother Douglas Miller took some of them in March 2001 (identified as DGM).

MAS

The elegant entrance facade

Named for Harriet High, one of the original benefactors, the High Museum of Art is characteristic of Meier's style. Like most of his buildings, it is white, clad in this case in porcelain-enameled steel panels. Like the Atheneum, it uses an exterior ramp (with a square archway) to focus the eye and an interior ramp for circulation. (See also Meier's Museum of Contemporary Art [MACBA] in Barcelona.) The structure houses not only exhibit space and staff offices, but an auditorium, cafe, museum shop, and other spaces.
 
Peter Gössel and Gabriele Leuthäuser describe the plan as being "based on three cubes occupying the corners of a square. The building concludes toward the fourth corner in a generously-glazed quarter circle. A long, diagonal ramp links road and entrance and thus optically enlarges the limited space in front of the building" (384).

MAS DGM MAS
 

Left and center: close views with the curvilinear form serving as entrance foyer (and cafe on the lower level); right: detail of the form to the left of the ramp

DGM MAS DGM
 
MAS DGM

Looking back toward the ramp

 

Side views looking toward the ramp; the curvilinear entrance foyer and cafe below

MAS DGM


Go to page 2.

Work Cited: Gössel and Gabriele Leuthäuser. Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Köln: Taschen, 1991.

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© 2002 Mary Ann Sullivan. I have photographed (on site), scanned, and manipulated all the images on these pages. Please feel free to use them for personal or educational purposes. They are not available for commercial purposes.

Page created by Mary Ann Sullivan