The High Museum of Art's historical American Art collection includes over 1,200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints made by artists working within the United States between 1780 and 1980.
With strengths in historical painting and sculpture, the collection demonstrates the evolution of a distinctly American point of view in artistic representation. From early American portraiture to the splendor of the Gilded Age, the High's nineteenth-century collection includes excellent examples in landscape and portraiture in addition to one of the largest holdings of American neoclassical marble sculpture. The High holds works by the nation's most progressive artists of the modern age, including the newly emerging groups of abstract painters, artists concerned with social justice and reform, and artists rooted in figural and narrative works featuring the American scene.