Cover Story: Exhibit A

The opening of the newly blinged-out $130 million High Museum expansion is the biggest art news in Atlanta this fall.

The Renzo Piano-designed addition, featuring an open piazza design, has been billed as a “village of the arts,” meant to encourage the kind of lingering and pedestrian traffic that could provide a needed shot of adrenaline in Midtown’s heart. Admission is free for its Nov. 12 opening. The centerpiece of the grand opening will be another post-Rockwell sweetheart of the middlebrow, Andrew Wyeth, featured in a retrospective (through Feb. 26) that spans seven decades of the artist’s career.

The High won’t be the only art spot kicking it up a notch this fall. Two galleries are adding some rock ‘n’ roll punch to their exhibition menu. Jackson Fine Art features celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz’s American Music series (Sept. 9-Oct. 22). From Brian Wilson hangin’ at his Beverly Hills swimming hole to a gristly, shirtless Iggy Pop, American Music chronicles the many phases of folk, gospel, blues and hip-hop that make up the national music scene. ... Barbara Archer Gallery will feature photographs of folk music legend Robert Allen Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan) in Daniel Kramer: Photographs of Bob Dylan, 1964-1965 (Sept. 23-Nov. 12).

Also at Barbara Archer, which appears to be expanding its repertoire beyond the usual folk art suspects, is a return of former Atlanta (now NYC-based) painter J. Ivcevich. The Silhouette City and the Pastoral Paradox Reprise installation and solo exhibition features his signature mix of resin-coated painting and photographs (Sept. 23-Nov. 12). ... Another celebrated Atlantan who set out for the bright lights of Gotham, the peripatetic shutterbug Chris Verene, is slated for Castleberry Hill’s Marcia Wood Gallery, where he will unveil Chris Verene — Galesburg: The New Chapters (Sept. 16-Oct. 22). It continues his chronicle of the escalating tragedies and lowbrow gothic of Verene’s working class Ohio hometown.

One of the most anticipated events of the art season, is Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s citywide roster of October shows, lectures and workshops. This year’s lectures include acclaimed San Francisco photographer Larry Sultan, who garnered major ink for his project The Valley, a photographic exploration of the thriving X-rated film industry in the San Fernando Valley. Sultan speaks at the Rich Theatre Sept. 29. ... ACP also collaborates with the new mixed-use complex Atlantic Station to bring an intriguing piece of public art to town. New York digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar will project onto a building in Atlantic Station a video work on the subject of Atlanta Oct. 20-Nov. 20.

Polyglot cultures are the way of the world these days, with American teenagers mainlining Hong Kong action cinema while Japanese college students mimic American blaxploitation styles. The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center will offer a survey of one of the super-freakiest of culture clashes, the mix of Asian and Southern culture in Red Beans and Rice: Asian Artists in the New South (Sept. 10-Oct. 29). ... Along those same lines, the always cutting-edge Saltworks Gallery will feature When the East Is in the House, a collaborative site-specific mural collaboration featuring Asian artist Stella Lai and African-American artist iona rozeal brown.

Promising to be equally playful and provocative, Nate More: War and Sex, a solo show featuring paper airplanes and sexual innuendo, appears at the Castleberry Hill Get This! Gallery (Oct. 15-Dec. 3). ... Galerie MC will feature a selection of photographers who play with toys in Toy Camera (Sept. 9-Oct. 22). ... Young Blood Gallery revisits its artist-decorated skateboard show Sk8 or Die II (Oct. 1-Oct. 30).

Atlanta College of Art Gallery’s new director, Stuart Horodner, has scheduled a promising slate of exhibitions including an examination of cities as sites for artist actions, Here & There: City Acts (Oct. 13-Nov. 27), which includes a collaboration between ACA-alum Hope Hilton and White House-alum Amy Carter. ... The ever snarky folks at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery are planning an open call exhibition devoted to big brother and big business in Touchpoint: A Corporate Pin-Up Show (Nov. 19-Dec. 24).

Design is cropping up more and more in museums and galleries, forcing a breakdown of the hierarchies that tend to keep consumer culture and high art on opposite sides of the fence. The Museum of Design Atlanta continues its commitment to the sublime appeal of the everyday with one of the most promising exhibitions of the season, a retrospective of the influential work of a man considered the father of American industrial design, Raymond Loewy. Designs for a Consumer Culture (Nov. 3-Dec. 23), will feature Loewy’s iconic 20th-century designs, which ran the gamut from the Lucky Strike cigarette package to the Greyhound Bus and Air Force One.