Exhibition View for Students with Jenni Sorkin and Romi Crawford

Join art historians Jenni Sorkin and Romi Crawford for a walkthrough of 'Thornton Dial. The Visible and The Invisible,' just for university students. 

This event is free, but capacity is limited. Reservations are required.  

About the exhibition 
Beginning 2 November, Hauser & Wirth will present an exhibition of large-scale paintings and assemblages by late American master Thornton Dial (1928 – 2016), featuring major works from each period of his extraordinary career. Drawing upon a history of critical literature on Dial and shaped by insights from such preeminent writers as Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, the exhibition will seek to highlight Dial’s accomplishments as a maker of powerfully physical works (‘the visible’), while drawing out the often obscured patterns of systemic trauma and exclusion (‘the invisible’) that drove his life and art. Including works that have not been exhibited in over three decades, ‘The Visible and Invisible’ will reintroduce visitors to an oeuvre endowed with undeniable potency and continued relevance. 

About Romi Crawford 
Romi Crawford is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and founder of Black Arts Movement School Modality and the New Art School Modality. She is co-author of The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago (Northwestern University, 2017) and editor of Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect (Green Lantern, 2021). 
 
About Jenni Sorkin 
Jenni Sorkin is Professor and Chair of History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also Affiliated Faculty in the Departments of Art, Feminist Studies, History and Media Arts and Technology. She writes on the intersections between gender, material culture, and contemporary art, working primarily on women artists and underrepresented media. Her books include Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women Artists, 1947–2016 (Skira, 2016), and Art in California (Thames & Hudson, 2021). She has contributed scholarly essays to major recent exhibitions and books that seek to reconfigure the received histories of twentieth century art, including Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College (ICA Boston, 2015), Outliers and American Vanguard Art (National Gallery of Art, 2018), Among Others: Blackness at MOMA (MOMA, 2018), Groundswell: Women of Land Art (Nasher, 2023), and the forthcoming Postwar Reader: A Global History, 1945-1965 (Okwui Enwezor and Aytreyee Gupta, eds.) Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Research Institute, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Modern Craft, the University of California Press Editorial Board, and currently serves as Co-Executive Editor of Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. 

Image: Installation view, ‘Thornton Dial. The Visible and The Invisible,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22^nd Street, 2 Nov 2024 – 11 Jan 2025. © Estate of Thornton Dial. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer