Becoming

On View September 24 - December 16, 2026

Some objects stop being useful before they stop having meaning.

Becoming explores what happens next.

Through the work of Thornton Dial and Sanford Kogan, objects once valued for their utility are reimagined as works of art that ask us to look again. At first we recognize the object. Then we see what it can become. Together, their work suggests that nothing is ever truly finished. Every object carries a history and the possibility of becoming something new.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Thornton Dial is one of the most original American artists of the late 20th century. He was born into poverty and spent his life in the South, working without formal training and pulling his materials from what was around him: wire, cloth, salvaged metal, rope, carpet scraps. From those materials he built large-scale paintings and found-object sculptures, drawing on the symbolic vocabulary of the rural Black South. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the High, and the Smithsonian.

Sanford Kogan works in FroiDesign, the discipline of Found and Repurposed Objects of Industrial Design. His work centers on objects originally shaped by their utility – industrial and functional artifacts that he incorporates into sculptural compositions. Light also plays an active role. He treats light as a material, shaping it as deliberately as form and making it integral to the overall composition. His goal is to invert the original hierarchy, allowing what was once secondary to become primary, thereby revealing the quiet aesthetics of lost utility. His work has been shown in Berlin, Paris, and, more recently, Richmond, Virginia, where he now resides.

This project was supported, in part, by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly.