Woodruff Arts Center
Encyclopedia
Woodruff Arts Center is a major visual
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

 and performing
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...

 arts center
Arts centre
An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for musical performance, workshop areas, educational...

 located in Atlanta. The center houses four arts divisions in one campus and not-for-profit organization. Opened in 1968, the Woodruff Arts Center is home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001...

, the High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art , located in Atlanta, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. Located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district, the High is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.-History:The Museum was...

, Young Audiences and the 14th Street Playhouse.

History

In 1962, Atlanta suffered an unprecedented loss when an airplane, the Chateau de Sully
Chateau de Sully
F-BHSM was the registration and callsign of a Boeing 707 named Chateau de Sully used by Air France for Flight 007, a charter flight which crashed on June 3, 1962 while attempting to depart Paris's Orly Airport en route to Atlanta, Georgia via New York City's Idlewild Airport...

, carrying the leaders of Atlanta’s arts and civic community crashed at the end of runway 8 attempting takeoff at Orly Airport. As the city grieved, it came together and used the devastating loss as a catalyst for the arts and built a fitting memorial to these victims. This led to the creation of the Atlanta Arts Alliance.

The Memorial Arts Center, as the Woodruff was originally known, opened October 5, 1968. It was renamed the Woodruff Arts Center in 1982 to honor its greatest benefactor, Robert W. Woodruff
Robert W. Woodruff
Robert Winship Woodruff was the president of The Coca-Cola Company from 1923 until 1954. With his enormous Coke fortune, he was also a major philanthropist, and many educational and cultural landmarks in the U.S...

. The art center also included the Atlanta College of Art
Atlanta College of Art
The Atlanta College of Art , established in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1905, was the first non-profit college of visual art in the Southeastern United States....

, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art. All three entities were combined into one corporation, then as now, unprecedented in this country. The Alliance Theatre was added in 1970 as the fourth division of the Woodruff and thirty-five years later in 2005, a fifth division was added when Young Audiences joined the center. This addition ensures the Woodruff’s PreK-12 programs now reach more than one million children annually, the largest base of any arts center in the country.

The Woodruff campus expanded in 1983 with the addition of the Richard Meier
Richard Meier
Richard Meier is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.- Biography :Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey...

-designed High Museum of Art building. This building made Meier the youngest Pritzker Prize
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...

-winning architect at that time.

On November 12-13, 2005, the Woodruff introduced its largest expansion since opening in 1968. The new addition features two new exhibit buildings and a new administrative and curatorial building for the High Museum of Art; a residence hall and sculpture studio; a full-service restaurant — Table 1280 at the Woodruff — as well as a public piazza and a new parking structure. This new "village for the arts" was designed by another Pritzker Prize winner, Italian architect Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...

.

Layout

The Woodruff campus sits on 12.25 acres (49,574 m²) with a planned expansion to 18.25 acres (73,855.2 m²). Currently, the campus includes 906000 square feet (84,170.2 m²) of exhibition, educational and performance space, plus a 200000 square feet (18,580.6 m²) garage located beneath the village. An estimated 1260000 square feet (117,057.8 m²) may be added when a new Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....

-designed Symphony Center is built.

The Woodruff’s village currently includes the Grammy-award winning Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; the south’s premiere regional theatre, the Alliance Theatre; the leading art museum in the southeast, the High Museum of Art; and Young Audiences, the largest provider of arts education in Georgia.

External links

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