ATLANTA, GA.- This summer, the High Museum of Art opened “Paper Trees” (July 31, 2026-Feb. 21, 2027), an exhibition that ponders the role and presence of trees in American art from the 19th century to the present. Featuring nearly 50 prints, drawings and sculptures from the High’s collection as well as loans from the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking and Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the exhibition traces different schools of thought in the depiction and representation of landscape and the natural world.

“By bringing these works together, we invite audiences to consider how artists have helped inspire reverence for nature, using the tree as a beautiful symbol of life,” said Rand Suffolk, director of the High.

In addition to a core selection of 19th- and 20th-century prints and works on paper from the High’s American collection, the exhibition features modern and contemporary works from across the museum’s collecting areas, including folk and self-taught art and decorative arts and design. Together, the artworks forefront the tree as the primary visual vehicle for the study of nature, from unfinished sketches made en plein air (drawn from life in nature rather than in a studio environment) to finished works made of or after trees as material and metaphor.





“The exhibition is an artist-driven exploration of the relationship between the visual arts and the natural world. While organized around the idea of the tree study, each artwork widens our understanding of the genre and emphasizes artistic practice and technique across multiple schools of art,” said Anni Pullagura, the High’s Margaret and Terry Stent associate curator of American art. “We’re particularly thrilled to be able to present rarely seen objects from the museum’s holdings of American works on paper, and to see these artworks in dialogue with root sculptures and woodturning, showing the multiple ways that trees and treelife continue to inspire artistic practice today.”

“Paper Trees” is being presented in the Works on Paper Gallery in the Lower Level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.