Other entanglements, plus my wish to complete long trains of philosophical thought on my other blog, have led me to neglect Counterforces, which keeps getting links to it nonetheless.
The death of longtime Museum of Fine Arts Houston director Peter Marzio, and the unrelated news that what might be termed Max Anderson's Thornton Dial retrospective from the Indianapolis Museum of Art will be shown in Atlanta, has reminded me of one of those utterly forgotten controversies that caused a huge storm at the time, as so many artworld events have.
Whether Dial's homage to John Lewis and the Selma Bridge would have been better served by being in Houston rather than in the city for which it was commissioned, I leave for others to decide. It was sited in its present Freedom Park location after having been intended for a more visually prominent space, and indeed it tends to be overlooked by drivers to the point that it rarely arouses even curiosity.
Anderson's longtime involvement with the work of Thornton Dial roused its own controversies, but this may be a case of all's well that ends well, although it has not ended completely and it has taken the better part of two decades to reach this point in the sometimes less than edifying tale of artworld reception of this extraordinary self-taught artist.
