The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28,985 m2) and a division of the Woodruff Arts Center. The High organizes and presents exhibitions of international and national significance alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of art, and is especially known for its 19th- and 20th-century American decorative arts, folk and self-taught art, modern and contemporary art, and photography. A cultural nexus of Atlanta since 1905, it hosts festivals, live performances, public conversations, independent art films, and educational programs year-round. It also features dedicated spaces for children of all ages and their caregivers, an on-site restaurant, and a museum store. In 2010, it had 509,000 visitors, 95th among world art museums. History The museum was founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association. In 1926, the High family, for whom the museum is named, donated their family home on Peachtree Street to house the collection following a series of exhibitions involving the Grand Central Art Galleries organized by Atlanta collector J. J. Haverty. Many pieces from the Haverty collection are now on permanent display in the High. A separate building for the museum was built adjacent to the family home in 1955. On June 3, 1962, 106 Atlanta arts patrons died in an airplane crash at Orly Airport in Paris, France, while on a museum-sponsored trip. Including crew and other passengers, 130 people were killed in what was, at the time, the worst single plane aviation disaster in history. Members of Atlanta's prominent families were lost including members of the Berry family who founded Berry College. During their visit to Paris, the Atlanta arts patrons had seen Whistler's Mother at the Louvre. In the fall of 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent Whistler's Mother to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street. To honor those killed in the 1962 crash, the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center was built for the High. The French government donated a Rodin sculpture The Shade to the High in memory of the victims of the crash. Architecture In 1983, a building designed by Richard Meier opened to house the High Museum of Art. Meier won the 1984