I, TOO, AM THORNTON DIAL

The LSU MOA is thrilled to present I, Too, Am Thornton Dial. This extensive exhibition includes over seventy assemblages, sculptures, paintings, and works on paper that examine a range of themes and subject matter, including Civil Rights and the African American experience.

OPENING RECEPTION & PANEL DISCUSSION

Thursday, March 30 Fifth Floor, 6 p.m. Celebrate the exhibit and learn about the artist during a panel discussion.

See pages 12–13 for upcoming programs.

Thornton Dial's life was interwoven with poverty and tumultuous experience, having lived in the deep South through the Great Depression, Jim Crow segregation, and the Civil Rights movement. As an adult, Dial worked at the Pullman Standard Plant in Bessemer, Alabama, where he honed his skills at construction and metal work, laying a foundation for his artistic endeavors. He began creating early-on, finding bits of odd scrap and debris, putting it together to make interesting forms that would decorate his home and yard.

When the plant shut down in 1981, Dial devoted his time to creating artwork. He drew inspiration from his life experiences, blending complex themes like Civil Rights, race, class, and family into sophisticated arrangements crafted with found objects—everything from bones, wood, toys, metal, and clothing. His assemblages, although compactly layered with commonplace fragments of life, move with a lightness, pulling the viewer in to explore the cracks and crevices of the varied surface.

IMAGE (above): Jerry Siegel, Thornton Dial, McCalla, Alabama (detail). 2007. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.

The I, Too, Am Thornton Dial exhibit at the LSU Museum of Art is co-curated by Paul Barrett and Michelle Schulte, Senior Curator and Director of Programs at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibition at LSU MOA includes artworks drawn from private and family collections. We would like to thank the lenders to the exhibition, including Doug McCraw, Robert S. Taubman, Brett and Lester Levy, Jr., Jerry Siegel, the Estate of William Sidney Arnett, and the Dial family. Thank you to sponsors Mary T. Joseph and Nancy and Cary Dougherty, corporate sponsor Taylor Porter Law Firm, and in-kind sponsor Lamar Advertising for supporting this exhibition. Additional support is provided by the generous donors to the LSU Museum of Art Annual Exhibition Fund.