Best Museum

The HIGH MUSEUM OF ART kept us Midtown-bound opening after opening over the last year. The November exhibition, Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion, marked the Dutch designer’s first North American show and the High’s fashion debut. The vast display included 45 outfits from 15 collections and revealed van Herpen’s flair for marrying technology, unconventional materials such as umbrella ribs repurposed as wearable art, and couture. Two outdoor exhibitions, Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena’s Los Trompos and Jaime Hayon’s Tiovivo (up through Nov. 27), provided younger (and not so young) visitors the opportunity to interact with beautiful structures. Los Trompos translates to “spinning tops” and took the meaning literally with its playground-size playthings. Tiovivo planted large-scale sculptures in the piazza. With their hollow insides and attached stairs and slides, the cartoonish structures invited investigation. The museum attracted almost 1,700 people to the opening of The Rise of Sneaker Culture, a thorough collection that included about 160 pairs of shoes. Besides showcasing familiar footwear such as Run-DMC’s shell-toe Adidas, The Rise “highlighted the marriage between high fashion and street wear,” CL senior writer Rodney Carmichael wrote. In addition to pushing boundaries with fashion-forward and touch-friendly installations, the High slayed with the retrospective Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, which presented pages from the late American artist’s journals and sketchbooks. What’s the High got planned next? Chances are, we’ll be there opening night. less...

A visit to Atlanta's Cyclorama can feel like a trip back in time, and not always in a good way. The memorial to the final battle of the Civil War in the form of a 360-degree 1887 painting can feel conceptually dusty, even alienating. It was an unlikely choice, then, for queer art collective John Q to choose the museum as the setting for its May 2013 piece "Campaign for Atlanta," which considered through spoken word and film the history of queer migration from rural to urban areas. Drawing on and showing the photos and films taken by the late Crawford Barton, the artists gave a vision of Barton's and others' paths from places like rural Georgia to the queer mecca of San Francisco. John Q proved that a difficult, modern reflection on these scenes could be done, even at the Cyclorama. www.johnq.org. less...

Tucked away down a dead-end street filled mostly with antique and design shops, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia feels like a secret. Instead of clamoring for attention with blockbuster exhibitions, this locally minded museum has quietly established itself as a home for risky, exciting work and consistent curatorial focus. MOCA GA's vital archiving program is building an expansive library of groundbreaking Georgia-based artists. But the Working Artist Project, which commissions work from artists such as monumental painter Xie Caomin and stylish filmmaker Micah Stansell, is the institution's crown jewel. 75 Bennett St. 404-367-8700. mocaga.org. less...

If only this category were called "Best Museum That Doesn't Have Dinosaurs," then maybe the High or the Michael C. Carlos Museum would stand a chance. The Giants of the Mesozoic exhibit at the FERNBANK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY helps it stand alone as Atlanta's best. Inside the main atrium, a fictional battle rages on the plains of prehistoric Argentina between the plant-eating Argentinosaurus and the meat-eating Giganotosaurus - two of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. There's also the weekly Martinis & IMAX, a great date night if your significant other is into vodka and late Cretaceous fauna. More dinos are on the way in 2009 when the exhibit Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries opens on Valentine's Day. I've already marked my calendar! Museum: Free-$15. Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m. Martinis & IMAX: $7-$15. Fri., 5:30-10 p.m., January-November. 767 Clifton Road. 404-929-6300. www.fernbankmuseum.org. less...

Though it works with a quirky, out-of-the-way exhibition space in the shade of the Marriott Marquis hotel, the small but deeply relevant MUSEUM OF DESIGN ATLANTA — the only one in the Southeast devoted exclusively to design — has managed to balance an interesting mix of national exhibitions and local shows. Many of them feature an advocacy edge recognizing the value of great (and green) architecture and affordable design to the future of the city. less...

The HIGH MUSEUM OF ART is hoping to pull some serious attendance with the Nov. 12 unveiling of its $130 million expansion designed by revered Italian architect Renzo Piano. Three new buildings linked to the original Richard Meier-designed museum will more than double the museum’s size. Expect blockbuster crowds for the inaugural exhibition, a retrospective of the 88-year-old legend Andrew Wyeth. Let’s hope that what’s good for the High is good for the rest of Atlanta’s arts scene. less...