Dinny’s Stories: Dinny and the Philosopher—or—Sockplate: One Smart Cookie

Robert Goodnough—a native of nearby Cortland and an alumnus of Syracuse University—did not count his Dinny the Dinosaur videos and sculptures among his “serious work.” Yet—in a very literal way—these whimsical works sustain an enduring, fundamental theme in Goodnough’s art. In a 1999 interview, the artist recalled:In high school, I went to the Natural History Museum [in New York City] and saw the dinosaur skeletons. Seeing those dinosaurs was a tremendous influence and these shapes in my paintings always seem to me to have been derived from dinosaur bones. The bones were put together and they became a dinosaur. I put these shapes together and they become an abstraction. (“The Best Way to Prepare Bananas: Fruits of the Soul from the Permanent Collection,” curated by Matt Conway and presented at the Johnson Museum June 24-August 13, 2017)