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 course of eighteen months and made works of art for each name, a practice he continued for thirty-five years. This catalog includes full-color reproductions of paintings, sculptures, mixed-media installations, and site-specific art, along with the official applications and confirmations of his name changes.

Ed McGowin, of New York City, has had more than sixty solo exhibitions at such places as Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. His work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the National Museum of American Art, and other private and public collections. J. Richard Gruber is director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans, and a member of the University of New Orleans faculty. Anders HŠrm is the curator at the Kunsthalle/Tallinn in Tallinn, Estonia. Thomas Sokolowski is director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Paul Richelson is assistant director and chief curator of Mobile Museum of Art.