In 2018, David Lewis Gallery presented "Mr. Dial's America," a survey of Thornton Dial's work from 1989 - 2011. The show garnered significant press, including a review from the editors of ARTnews, who praised the artist's diverse oeuvre of "early self-portraits as well as paintings treating Jim Crow–era America and the struggle for civil rights, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the site of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks." Writing of the show in the New York Times, Roberta Smith commends "Dial's ability to commandeer any material into a painting," and called the works "fiercely formal in ways that connect to Jackson Pollock's allover fields of dripped paint and the object paintings of Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel."
