Thornton Dial (10 September 1928 – 25 January 2016) was a pioneering African-American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial’s body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. His works have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Ten of Mr. Dial’s works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.