2023 marked the relaunch of the Atlanta Arts Alliance. Bringing together arts organizations anchored in the visual arts, the Atlanta Arts Alliance hopes to grow the arts community in Atlanta with sustainable support and dynamic arts advocacy much in the same way that the original group did in 1963.

The original Atlanta Arts Alliance was formed on August 2, 1963, largely as a response to the June 3, 1962 airplane crash at Orly Field in Paris that caused the death of 106 Atlanta art patrons. The first institutional members to join the Alliance were the Atlanta Art Association (later called the High Museum of Art), the Atlanta School of Art, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Later the Atlanta Children's Theater and the Alliance Theater Company also joined. The Atlanta Arts Alliance is run by a board of trustees, a president, and the directors of the affiliate organizations. The first president of the Alliance was Charles R. Yates, an Atlanta civic leader, amateur golfer, and business man. One of the primary goals of the group was to build a physical center for its member institutions. Anonymous gifts (including four million dollars from the Woodruff Foundation) and other donations raised through extensive fundraising campaigns resulted in the construction of the 13 million dollar Atlanta Memorial Arts Center, located at 1280 Peachtree Street, N.E. Joe Amisano, a local architect, designed the building and construction began in 1966 and ended 1968. The Atlanta Arts Alliance continued to expand through annual appeals for donations and eventually funded building projects for the High Museum of Art (housed in the Woodruff Arts Center), the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Alliance Theatre Company, the 14th Street Playhouse, and the Atlanta College of Art.

Source: Atlanta History Center Archive