Max Guy Built a Yellow Brick Road from Chicago to the Land of Oz

The exhibition “But Tell Me, Is It a Civilized Country?” is the result of Max Guy’s deep dive into the Land of Oz, a territory the self-deprecating Witch of the North described as uncivilized because it harbors wizards and witches like her. The exhibition title—actually, the witch’s question to Dorothy about Kansas from the first Oz book, published in Chicago in 1900—brings to mind the racist and criminal inhospitalities of recent times, from Texas and Arizona