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Big Museum Show for an Ex-Welder
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
Thornton Dial's 'High and Wide (Carrying the Rats to the Man)' includes hidden references to slavery.
His Alabama family couldn't afford to send him to school. He began doing art seriously in his 60s. Now, at age 82, Thornton Dial is finally getting a big museum survey show that will display 70 of his large-scale works.
Mr. Dial - who is illiterate, tended animals as a little boy and later welded railway cars - translated his social messages into paintings and sculptures that are only now being embraced by the art world. "When I first saw some of his pieces, it was breathtaking," says Bridgette McCullough, a Chicago art historian and an expert in African-American art.
Reflecting Mr. Dial's background, the exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which opened Thursday and runs through Sept. 18, is called "Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial." (The exhibit will later travel to New Orleans, Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.)
cont'd...
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
Thornton Dial's 'High and Wide (Carrying the Rats to the Man)' includes hidden references to slavery.
His Alabama family couldn't afford to send him to school. He began doing art seriously in his 60s. Now, at age 82, Thornton Dial is finally getting a big museum survey show that will display 70 of his large-scale works.
Mr. Dial - who is illiterate, tended animals as a little boy and later welded railway cars - translated his social messages into paintings and sculptures that are only now being embraced by the art world. "When I first saw some of his pieces, it was breathtaking," says Bridgette McCullough, a Chicago art historian and an expert in African-American art.
Reflecting Mr. Dial's background, the exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which opened Thursday and runs through Sept. 18, is called "Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial." (The exhibit will later travel to New Orleans, Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.)
cont'd...
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