The High Museum of Art turns 100 this year, and on Sunday, October 18, 2026, it is taking the celebration outside. From noon to 5 p.m., a stretch of Peachtree Street between 15th and 16th Streets — the block directly in front of the museum — will close to traffic for a free Centennial Block Party. Everything outdoors costs nothing, including free Coca-Cola products. The galleries themselves still require a paid ticket, but the party on the pavement does not.
The location is not incidental. It is the same ground where the museum began.
In October 1926, Harriet "Hattie" High donated her Peachtree Street residence to the Atlanta Art Association in honor of her late husband, Joseph Madison High, and the house became Atlanta's first art museum. The Atlanta Constitution marked the occasion on October 16, 1926, describing "Atlanta's new home of culture and the arts" as sitting "like a gem of truth, bowered in lovely green trees and shrubs, with the gentle rising sweep of the lawn in front, on Peachtree Street between 15th and 16th." A century later, the block party returns to that exact address.
The museum's roots reach back even further. In 1905, the Superior Court of Fulton County granted the Atlanta Art Association a twenty-year charter to promote interest in the fine and applied arts and to found both an art school and an art museum. It took two decades and Hattie High's gift to give that ambition a permanent home.
What grew from those rooms now holds more than 20,000 works spanning centuries, continents and media. The institution's growth has tracked Atlanta's own, sometimes through tragedy. In 1962, more than 100 Atlanta arts patrons died in a plane crash at Paris-Orly, a loss that led the city to build the Memorial Arts Center, now the Woodruff Arts Center, as a living tribute. The Richard Meier-designed building that gave the High its modern identity opened in 1983, and the museum now occupies facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Meier and Renzo Piano.
The centennial year has brought a substantial reworking of the collection. The museum has reinstalled its American and African art galleries, abandoning a strictly chronological arrangement in favor of thematic and material connections that place works together across periods and disciplines. New acquisitions in the American galleries include a rare painting by Jacob Lawrence, a quilt by Carolyn L. Mazloomi and a work by Grandma Moses. The African art galleries add paintings, textiles, prints, drawings and ceramics by Nigerian artists including Ben Enwonwu, Ladi Kwali, Nike Okundaye, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Jimoh Akolo. Across photography, contemporary design and contemporary art, the museum is adding more than 200 works.
The High has also committed to covering admission for every Atlanta Public Schools K-12 field trip during the 2026-27 school year. The museum says it hosts about 4,000 APS students annually.
Sunday's party is built to match that breadth. Algebra Blessett emcees all day, and the entertainment runs across two stages. DJ XZACT opens the main stage at noon with classic R&B, hip-hop, 80s and 90s cuts, deep house and Afrobeats. At 12:30, a Worley Brown Boys & Girls Club group performs on the sidewalk stage. DJ LV follows at 1 p.m. with dancehall, Shatta riddim, hip-hop, house, reggae and old-school classics.
At 1:30, the sidewalk stage in front of the Memorial Arts Building hosts "All Smiles," part of the High's Theatre for the Very Young series — a sensory-friendly show about the many ways we smile, aimed at newborns through age 5 and their grown-ups, running about 30 minutes. The official welcome at 2 p.m. on the main stage is kicked off by the Atlanta Hawks Drumline, Dancers and Harry the Hawk, with Rand Suffolk.
Later in the afternoon, the Atlanta-based genre-fluid collective Biological Misfits performs. Dance Canvas holds an open rehearsal, Brenau Dance performs, and the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra String Quartet plays. The day closes with a Come Together Dance Party from 3:30 to 5 p.m.
Between sets, the outdoor activities run from noon to 4:30. Visitors can make birthday hats, draw with chalk, blow bubbles, and walk through an immersive kaleidoscope experience. Soccer activations take over the front lawn. The Atlanta Hawks Flight Crew performs stunts. And the Trap Music Museum brings its pink car — the vehicle associated with 2 Chainz's "Trap House" promotional campaign and now a fixture of the Atlanta hip-hop museum's collection.
Food vendors will be on site. The High suggests registering online in advance to help plan for the day, though block party access is free and the event runs rain or shine. Members should watch for a limited run of custom swag. Museum admission, for those who want the galleries, the Museum Shop and the indoor bars pouring The Ramp beer, is sold separately.
The block party is one piece of a broader centennial program. The High has partnered with MARTA, the Atlanta Beltline, the Atlanta Hawks, Havertys, UPS and Delta Air Lines on public art installations and other activations. A walking tour on October 29 traces the architects who designed the buildings that have housed the museum over its history. Friday Jazz continues with three stages and music by Kelly McCarty, Rodney Edge and The Tom Brown 6. And on Friday, October 30, the museum hosts "A Haunting at 100," a Halloween night event. The centennial year also includes "Martin Puryear: Nexus," a survey of the acclaimed American sculptor, and "I SPY! Walter Wick's Hidden Wonders."
For one afternoon, though, the story comes back to where it started: a closed street, a lawn, and a museum that began as one woman's house on Peachtree.