An artist reveals the networks of power and money underlying the modern world

Though artist Mark Lombardi died in 2000, his work maintains a fascinating relevance today. Global Networks, a traveling exhibit featuring Lombardi's drawings, is on display at the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa through August 1. Organized by Independent Curators International, the seven-city tour will end after a stay at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from September 10 to December 5. -- The Editors

If I could, I would ask Mark Lombardi a lot of questions. Questions like "To what extent did you realize Osama bin Laden posed a significant threat to America?" and "Does it scare you that an FBI agent requested to see one of your drawings just after the attacks on September 11?" And especially "Who are the real 'evil ones' the American public should be concerned about?" Unfortunately, I'll never ask him these questions -- Lombardi committed suicide in his Brooklyn studio in 2000. He was 48 years old.

The crowd today at the Drawing Center in New York City's SoHo neighborhood is nothing like the typical Saturday gallery-hopping throng. There are somber old people, shaking their heads. There are bright-eyed, disbelieving young people, obviously inspired by Lombardi's drawings. And, most incongruously, there are middle-aged Wall Street types in suits, soberly staring down the pieces with blank, sad eyes. They're here to see Global Networks, a posthumous retrospective of Lombardi's huge, impossibly detailed diagrammatic drawings of high-profile financial and political scandals involving government and corporate personnel from all over the world.

From far away, Lombardi's drawings look like tightly composed scientific or business diagrams. Swooping arrows conjoin dozens of nodes, mapping the dizzying interconnectedness of politics to corporations, of corporations to natural resources, and, of course, of natural resources to politics. Move in closer and it becomes clear that the drawings' form is a convenient method of exposing their damning content.