DETROIT — A Smithsonian exhibit celebrating the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. opens Sunday, coinciding with what would have been the civil rights leader's 73rd birthday.
"In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." a collection of 120 works by more than 100 artists who carry on King's spirit through their art will be at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.
The exhibit will travel to six cities during the next two years, said Anna Cohn, director of The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.
The show features work by Norman Rockwell as well as lesser-known artists like 73-year-old Thornton Dial, who was born to a sharecropping family on an Alabama plantation and worked for more than 30 years as a steelworker.
Dial's sculpture "Slave Ship" uses raw materials like scrap metal, rope and canvas.
Dial said he saw King everywhere in the historical and continuing struggle for equality.
"He said things would happen, he said black children and white children would shake hands," Dial said. "I'm just proud to see it."
Steven Kasher, the exhibit's curator of photography, said he has worked on nearly 10 exhibits dealing with civil rights and the relevancy never changes.
"Against the backdrop of this extremely complicated world we're living in, this brings us all a deep message fundamental to the human spirit," Cohn said. "It is beyond timely. It is sorely needed."
"In the Spirit of Martin" will stay in Detroit until July 28, then travel to Miami Beach, Fla.; Minneapolis; New York; Memphis, Tenn.; and Montgomery, Ala., through March 2004.
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