Five more museums acquire art from Souls Grown Deep Foundation

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilarie M. Sheets

“Sometimes I Get Emotion From the Game,” by Purvis Young, is among the acquisitions by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, one of five institutions getting works from Souls Grown Deep.

In a strategic effort to reshape the narrative of American art, the Souls Grown Deep Foundation will help five museums acquire paintings, sculptures and works on paper by self-taught African-American artists of the South. These acquisitions bring to 12 the number of museums that have received more than 300 works from the Atlanta-based nonprofit, through gifts and purchase. “There is an awakening of interest in African-American art from museums trying to be inclusive and diverse,” said Maxwell Anderson, president of Souls Grown Deep, who announced the transfer of 51 objects by 30 black self-taught artists to the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The new acquisitions together are valued at roughly $1.6 million, with the five museums paying a discounted rate of $455,000. [More]

At the Met, a riveting testament to black self-taught artists of the American South

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Roberta Smith

Thornton Dial’s two-sided relief-painting-assemblage, “History Refused to Die” (2004), also gives this Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition its title. His work is in conversation with quilts by, from left, Lola Pettway (“Housetop,” circa 1975); Lucy T. Pettway (“Housetop” and “Bricklayer” blocks with bars, circa 1955); and Annie Mae Young (“Work-clothes quilt with center medallion of strips,” from 1976).

American art from the 20th and 21st centuries is broader, and better than previously acknowledged, especially by museums. Essential help has come from people like William Arnett and his exemplary Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Their focus is the important achievement of black self-taught artists of the American South, born of extreme deprivation and social cruelty, raw talent and fragments of lost African cultures. The Met was the first of the foundation’s beneficiaries, receiving a gift of 57 artworks by 30 artists in 2014. Now, the museum celebrates its fortune with “History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift.” [More]

Thornton Dial, Pioneering Outsider Artist, Dies at 87

ARTNET | NEWS
By Andrew Russeth

Thornton Dial, Out of the Darkness, the Lord Gave Us Light, 2003, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. STEPHEN PITKIN, PITKIN STUDIO/©THORNTON DIAL

Artist Thornton Dial, who used found objects, fabric, and paint to make astounding, intricate wall reliefs and sculptures that harbor nuanced narratives at once grand and intimate, died yesterday, Monday, January 25, at his home in Emelle, Alabama. The cause of death was not released. In recent years he had been ill and had strokes. He was 87. The dense surfaces of Dial’s art, loaded with everything from slices of metal to doll parts to carpeting and bedecked with intriguing combinations of color, radiate carefully controlled energies. The undulating compositions can bring to mind titans like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. [link]

Outsider Thornton Dial's works on paper at Manhattan's Boesky Gallery

ARTSBEAT
By Randy Kennedy

Thornton Dial, the self-taught Alabama artist whose best-known work — dense, chaotic wall reliefs that exist somewhere between painting and sculpture — recently entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is moving into the Manhattan gallery ecosphere. Mr. Dial, 87, will be represented by the Marianne Boesky Gallery, whose roster includes artists like Frank Stella, the painter Barnaby Furnas and the director John Waters. In 2011, the Indianapolis Museum of Art presented the first major survey of his work. [link]

For Met Museum, a Major Gift of Works by African-American Artists From the South

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Randy Kennedy

Thornton Dial (American artist, 1928-) The Last Day of Martin Luther King 1992 "

NEW YORK---The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Monday that it had received a major gift of 20th-century works by African-American artists from the South, including 10 pieces by Thornton Dial and 20 important quilts made by the Gee’s Bend quilters of Alabama. The works, 57 in all, are being donated by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which was begun in 2010 by the scholar and collector William S. Arnett to raise the profile of art by self-taught African-Americans. An exhibition at the Met devoted to works from the foundation is planned for the fall of 2016. [link]

Thornton Dial Show at Atlanta's Bill Lowe Gallery

AOA NEWS

GEORGIA - In conjunction with the Soul Grown Deep Foundation, the Bill Lowe Gallery presents "Disaster Area" an exhibition of the works of Thornton Dial on the occasion of the National Black Arts Festival. This exhibition examines works made by Dial over the past four years dealing with various disasters, natural and man-made. From the wreckage and rubble of destruction Dial constructs complex and beautiful assemblages that illustrate the fragility of the human condition but affirm the profound belief that we are all in this together. [link]

The Messiah, and Other Religious Truths

AOA NEWSBy Ernest Britton

"The Dogwood Tree" by Thornton Dial

INDIANA - The most exciting exhibition in America today may well be Thornton Dial's (b. 1928) amazing retrospective, "Hard Truths" at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It is a masterwork of repression, refuse and redemption, and the response on Twitter, Facebook and the news media has been equally enthusiastic. In his 2003 "The Dogwood Tree" (above), Dial places a piece of real dogwood beneath the central figure of the black Messiah. It's an easily identifiable image but still transformative especially for those who have heard that Christ's cross was constructed of dogwood (It wasn't but it's a beautiful tale). It is visual art storytelling of this type that gripes you throughout this huge exhibit that also includes imagery of the death of Princess Diana, American racism, fires in California and the tragedy of 9-11. I hope you won't miss it but I also apologize, because in last week's preview post I neglected to share the closing date for the show (as one reader e-mailed). The show, "Hard Truths" runs through September 18 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

There's "Hard Truth" in Indiana

THIS AFTERNOON, following worship services, the AOA team is headed to the Indianapolis Museum of Art to experience the opening weekend of a major retrospective on Alabama artist and spiritual master of found-objects, Thorton Dial (b. 1928). Dial is the spotlighted artist for this year's winter/spring exhibition and it's a show that everyone should see. He is a hero to AOA friend, and fellow found-object artist Tom, who described the exhibition, Hard Truths as "a once in a life-time opportunity to experience an artform as original to America as gospel music." Between us, we've only seen 2 or 3 of his works in the past, so this will be a real treat today.

IMA Exhibit Spotlights Thornton Dial

INDIANAPOLIS STAR

INDIANA -- A fundamental characteristic of Thornton Dial's work is his use of found objects. An exhibition, "Hard Truths" opens this week at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. "The castaway objects he uses for their resonate symbolism, just not for the sake of using materials. They're all signs and have complex imbedded meaning especially when they start to converse with each other," she said. This draws from allegorical displays known as the African-American yard show appearing in the South's cultural topography for more than 100 years. "It's a form of encoded visual language that expresses a wide range of social, political, spiritual, philosophical ideas,"  said Joanne Cubbs, Indianapolis Museum of Art's adjunct curator of American Art. [link]