Thornton DialOfficial Estate Site

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Exhibitions & Collections

Four decades of solo and group exhibitions, the catalogues published alongside them, and the museums that hold the work today.

Solo Exhibitions

Nov 17, 1993 – Jan 2, 1994
Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger
New Museum, New York

Jun 29 – Oct 15, 1996
Thornton Dial: Remembering The Road
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta

Sep 25, 2005 – Jan 8, 2006
Thornton Dial in the 21st Century
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Feb 25 – Sep 18, 2011
Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Nov 3, 2011 – Mar 3, 2012
Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Feb 24 – May 20, 2012
Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial
New Orleans Museum of Art

Mar 30 – Jul 1, 2012
Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill

Jun 30 – Sep 30, 2012
Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial
Mint Museum, Charlotte

Sep 11, 2021 – Feb 27, 2022
Thornton Dial: The Tiger Cat
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth

Sep 9 – Dec 10, 2022
Thornton Dial: I, Too, Am Alabama
Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, UAB, Birmingham

The Catalogues

Each of these was published for an exhibition, and together they are the scholarly record of the work.

Cover of the book Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger, 1993. The whole cover is a detail of one of Dial's paintings in red, yellow, black and white, with the artist's name at the top left and the title along the lower edge.

Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger

Amiri Baraka and Thomas McEvilley

1993 · 160 pages · 122 color illustrations · hardcover

Harry N. Abrams, with the American Folk Art Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the American Center

ISBN 978-0-8109-3217-3

Cover of the book Thornton Dial in the 21st Century, 2005, showing a detail of a work in deep teal and green, with a pale creature-like form at its centre against a near-black ground.

Thornton Dial in the 21st Century

Paul Arnett, Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf Jr.

2005 · 324 pages · 297 color illustrations · hardcover

Tinwood Books, with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

ISBN 978-0-9719104-3-0

Cover of the book Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial, 2011, showing a dark work threaded with pale branching lines and netting, the title set across the lower half in red and white.

Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial

Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf, with David C. Driskell and Greg Tate

2011 · 216 pages · hardcover

Indianapolis Museum of Art / DelMonico Books / Prestel

ISBN 978-3-7913-5058-5

Cover of the book Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper, 2012. A drawing in red, blue and brown of a curled, coiling figure sits on a white ground, with the artist's name printed in blue at the lower left.

Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper

Edited by Bernard L. Herman · foreword by Emily Kass

2012 · 224 pages · 86 color illustrations · hardcover

University of North Carolina Press, with the Ackland Art Museum

ISBN 978-0-8078-3529-6

Front cover of Creation Story: Gee's Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial. A patchwork of quilt and assemblage fragments in orange, green, cream and grey, with the title in white capitals on a dark band across the centre.

Creation Story: Gee’s Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial

Edited by Mark W. Scala

2012 · illustrated · hardcover and paperback

Vanderbilt University Press, with the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville

ISBN 978-0-8265-1881-1

Front cover of Thornton Dial: Viewpoint of the Foundry Man. A black and white photograph of flattened steel straps and lengths of wire laid over a thick tarry surface, with the artist's name and title in white type at the left.

Thornton Dial: Viewpoint of the Foundry Man

Essays by Karen Wilkin and Phillip March Jones

2012 · 77 pages · illustrated

Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

Front cover of Souls Grown Deep, Volume One. A painting of pale figures in pink and white walking in a group across a dark green and orange ground, with the title in cream capitals above them.

Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, Volume One

Edited by Paul Arnett and William Arnett

2000 · 544 pages · hardcover

Tinwood Books, Atlanta

ISBN 978-0-9653766-0-0

Front cover of Souls Grown Deep, Volume Two. A painting of a large white horse on a red ground, surrounded by small dark figures and haloed faces, with the title in white capitals across the upper half.

Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, Volume Two

Edited by Paul Arnett and William Arnett

2001 · 576 pages · hardcover

Tinwood Books, Atlanta

ISBN 978-0-9653766-3-1

Two paintings by Thornton Dial hang far apart on a long white gallery wall. The left one, framed in black, is a mass of red, yellow and white loops with faces and a large eye worked into it; the right one, unframed, shows four blue faces above a patterned bench against red and orange.

Installation Views

The work on a wall

Hung, lit, and seen at the distance the scale asks for.

PHOTOGRAPHER CREDIT NEEDED — ask before this one is published.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2000
Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

May 25 – Sep 2, 2012
Creation Story: Gee’s Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial
Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville

Jun 3, 2017 – Apr 1, 2018
Revelations: Art from the African American South
de Young Museum, San Francisco

May 22 – Sep 23, 2018
History Refused to Die
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jun 8 – Sep 2, 2019
Souls Grown Deep: Artists of the African American South
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jun 8 – Nov 17, 2019
Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Dec 12, 2020 – Dec 5, 2021
In the Presence of our Ancestors
Minneapolis Institute of Art

2024 – 2025
Somewhere to Roost
American Folk Art Museum, New York

Public Collections

His work is held by the following institutions, among others.