Woodruff Arts Center, located in Atlanta, Georgia, combines four visual and performing arts divisions on one campus as one not-for-profit organization. Opened in 1968, the Woodruff Arts Center is home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, Young Audiences and the 14th Street Playhouse. In 1962, Atlanta suffered an unprecedented loss when an airplane, the Chateau de Sully, 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 is now known as the Woodruff Arts Center (renamed in 1982 to honor its greatest benefactor, Robert W. Woodruff.) The art center also included the Atlanta College of Art, 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-designed High Museum of Art building.

This building made Meier the youngest Pritzker Prize-winning architect at that time.

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