The Best Art Museums and Folk Art Destinations in Georgia
Georgia offers a variety of opportunities to enjoy art in traditional museum settings. But Georgia also has notable folk-art destinations that allow visitors to see art off the beaten path. I’ve experienced Georgia’s art scene in both ways, wandering the halls of its art museums and exploring everyday locales transformed by a folk artist’s imagination. In this post, I’ve described a few of my favorite places in both categories, along with tips for visiting.
Georgia Art Museums
From ancient artifacts to contemporary sculptures, Georgia’s art museums have a little something for everyone. Here are my recommendations for Georgia art lovers looking for a day of traditional museum-going.
High Museum
The High Museum is the largest art museum in Georgia and one of the premier museums in the Southeast. Its permanent collection consists of more than 15,000 works, including European paintings, American decorative objects, African masks, folk art, modern art, and sculpture.
The museum itself is a work of art, designed by renowned architects Renzo Piano and Richard Meier. Known for his Modernist white geometric buildings and use of light, Meier’s projects include the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Jubilee Church in Rome. You might also recognize the High from the big screen: its façade stood in for the fictitious Museum of Great Britain in Marvel’s Black Panther.
The High also regularly hosts world-class exhibits. Some of the exhibits we’ve attended through the years include the Yayoi Kasama: Infinity Mirrors exhibit in 2019, Cezanne and the Modern, Masterpieces of European Art in 2014, and the Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis in 2013.
Tips for Visiting
-Be sure to check out Anish Kapoor’s Untitled mirror sculpture on the top floor of the Wieland Pavilion. Kapoor is best known for his work Cloud Gate, also known as the “Bean” in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
-Consider having lunch at the High Café or Twelve Eighty on the museum’s campus. The High Café is a casual eatery, located on the lower level of the Stent Wing, serving sandwiches and salads. Twelve Eighty is a sit-down full-service restaurant and bar, located across from the Wieland Pavilion.
-Paid public parking is available in the Woodruff Arts Center Garage beneath the High Museum. If the Woodruff Arts Center Garage is full, try the Promenade Parking Garage on 15th, or look for a free spot along one of the museum’s side streets.
-Thanks to a grant from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, all visitors get free admission to the High Museum on the second Sunday of every month.
Georgia Museum of Art
The Georgia Museum of Art, located on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, is the official art museum of Georgia. Housing 21 galleries and an outdoor sculpture garden, its permanent collection consists of 19th- and 20th-century paintings, American, European, and Asian works on papers, and Georgia decorative arts. It also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions. Check for a listing of current and upcoming exhibits at the UGA calendar of events.
Tips for Visiting
-Admission is free, but visitors must reserve a timed entry to the museum online.
-The Georgia Museum of Art can be easily seen in about an hour. Think about combining your visit with a stroll through the nearby State Botanical Gardens and lunch in downtown Athens.
Columbus Museum
The second largest art museum in Georgia, Columbus Museum houses 14,000 items of regional history and American fine arts. It boasts a surprisingly diverse collection of fine arts. Notable works include a blown-glass boat installation by Dale Chihuly and the painting “What’s different about Alice is that she has the most incisive way of telling the truth” by Columbus native Amy Sherald. Sherald is best known for painting Michelle Obama’s official portrait, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The grounds of the Columbus Museum also include a historic garden designed by Bradley Olmstead, son of famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead.
Tips for Visiting
-Admission to the Columbus Museum is free, but the museum welcomes donations.
-After your visit, stroll the RiverWalk, a scenic 15-mile linear park that runs along the banks of the Chattahoochee River through downtown Columbus.
-Interested in more of Amy Sherald’s work? Check out the Obama Portraits Tour at the High Museum in Atlanta from January to March 2022.
Other Georgia Art Museums
Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta—Located on the Emory University campus, the Michael C. Carlos Museum features Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, and Asian, and African antiquities.
Cyclorama at Atlanta History Center in Atlanta—Installed in its new home at the Atlanta History Center in 2019, the Cyclorama is a 49-foot-tall circular painting from 1886 depicting the Battle of Atlanta. Visitors pass through a tunnel under the painting and ascend a viewing platform for a 360-degree view.
Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville—The Booth Western Art Museum is the only museum dedicated to Western art in the Southeast. Along with sun-drenched paintings of cowboys, its permanent collection includes presidential letters, Native American artifacts, a Civil War exhibit, and modern and abstract Western art.
Telfair Museums in Savannah—The Jepson Center and Telfair Academy make up the Telfair Museums, along with the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters. The Telfair Academy features 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, while the Jepson Center showcases visiting exhibitions and interactive galleries.
SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah—Located in a restored railway depot from the 1850s, SCAD Museum of Art’s permanent collection includes modern and contemporary art, African American art, British and American art, a photography collection, and a costume collection.
Georgia Folk Art Destinations
According to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, “folk art” is art that is decorative or utilitarian, is often self-taught, reflects cultural aesthetics and social issues, and is “of, by, and for the people.” It can include a variety of media as well as intangible forms of expression like dance, song, poetry, and food. Here are a few folk-art destinations I recommend in Georgia.
Paradise Gardens
Paradise Gardens is the former home of folk artist and Baptist minister Howard Finster. A message from God inspired Finster to transform his four-acre property in Summerville, Georgia, into a colorful and chaotic display of sacred art. He created almost 47,000 works between 1976 and his death in 2001.
The property includes the World Folk Art Chapel, a ramshackle building with four circular tiers rising out its tin roof. Paradise Gardens also has a maze-like wooden tunnel that serves as a gallery and a barn filled with rusted bicycle parts and hub caps. Along a garden path, you’ll find a trippy treehouse made of repurposed mirrors. It’s a hoarder’s wonderland filled with found object sculptures, mosaics, and text and image paintings on plywood.
Prior to visiting Paradise Gardens, I’d only viewed Finster’s work in the High Museum. But removed from its original context, I didn’t really get it. To fully appreciate Finster’s art, you have to see it in the bizarre Southern gothic setting in which he created it and meant it to be seen.
Tips for Visiting
-Interested in exploring more of the Summerville area? Follow the Outsider Art Trail Tour, with stops at the Rock Garden, the Trade Day Flea Market, and the Folk America Gallery. For an overnight stay, consider one of three Airbnb suites located on the Paradise Garden property.
-Each fall, Paradise Garden hosts Finster Fest, with more than 60 booths of folk and craft artists and three stages of live music. This year’s Finster Fest takes place on October 9 and 10.
Rock City
Rock City might seem like a surprising addition to this list. But in fact Howard Finster himself was inspired by its kitschy roadside appeal. Along with its natural wonders, including a botanical garden that snakes through impressive rock formations, Rock City boasts the creepy Fairyland Caverns. Garnet and Frieda Carter, who opened the property as a tourist attraction in 1932, imported ceramic gnomes and elves from Germany and then drilled out a cavern in the granite mountain to build dioramas. The cavern ends at the Mother Goose Village, which features famous fairytale scenes. The entire Fairyland Caverns experience is in the dark, lit only by blacklight shining off the garish fluorescent paint of the figurines. It’s a strange sideshow to an otherwise scenic garden walk.
Tips for Visiting
-Rock City is in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, just six miles from the bustling tourist destination of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Take a few days to experience all that Chattanooga has to offer.
-On a clear day, you can reportedly see seven states from Rock City’s Lover’s Leap, the overlook above Rock City’s manmade waterfall.
The Rock Garden
The Rock Garden in Calhoun, Georgia, is a folk-art garden with more than 20 miniature buildings made of pebbles, shells, and mosaic tiles. They include four-foot-tall replicas of the Notre Dame Cathedral in France and the Colosseum in Rome, as well as lighthouses, bridges, and castles. The garden is maintained by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and admission is free. Kids will love exploring the garden paths and popping their heads into the little buildings. It’s a great family-friendly way to spend time outdoors on a beautiful day.
Tips for Visiting
-Take a picnic and have lunch at one of the benches next to the garden. Then, walk the short hiking trail, which makes a loop up the hill behind the garden.
Other Georgia Folk Art Destinations
Pasaquan in Buena Vista—After being visited by a spirit, folk artist Eddie Owens Williams created his own religion called Pasaquoyanism and transformed his mother’s seven-acre property into Pasaquan, his “personal utopia, where all cultures and ethnic groups can come together in harmony and connect with the earth and the universe.” It consists of colorful buildings, murals, and elaborately painted masonry walls.
Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia in Sautee—Less than five miles from Helen, Georgia, this museum features permanent and temporary exhibits showcasing North Georgia’s folk pottery traditions.
Doll’s Head Trail in Atlanta—Doll’s Head Trail is a community art project at Constitution Lakes Park in DeKalb County. The 1.5-mile family-friendly path features creepy and quirky folk art consisting of old dolls and other found objects.
Autrey Mill Nature Preserve in Johns Creek—Find the monkey statues along the Forest Trail at Autrey Mill Nature Preserve. The artwork was inspired by a bizarre story involving a circus monkey escape gone wrong, though the story may or may not be true.
Interested in more things to do around Georgia? Then read The Ultimate Georgia Waterfall Guide: Best Waterfalls for Families and Ease Your Mind with 8 Great Outdoor Activities Near Atlanta.
