Ed McGowin (b. 1938) has, under a variety of names and guises, created an expansive body of art that ultimately falls outside of traditional categories. His paintings, sculptures, conceptual art projects, films, writings, and public art installations have in common a southern sensibility, one rooted in his early experiences in Mississippi and Alabama.

Ed McGowin, Name Change is a retrospective of a project started in 1970 to explore a theory he conceived about the way art history would evolve. As a metaphor for this theory he had his name changed legally twelve times over the...