Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson
March 30, 2005 7:00 PM - 9:00 AM
EVENT BEGINS: 7:30PM
LOCATION: West Hall Auditorium
In the lecture Silent Message of the Museum, conceptual artist Fred
Wilson will scrutinize the biased presentation of history by art
institutions using examples from his work, illustrating the power of
curation and arrangement of objects. Part of the Spring 2005 iEAR
presents! series, his lecture will take place on March 30th at 7:30pm
in the West Hall Auditorium at RPI. There will be a gallery reception
at 5:00pm in West Hall Gallery 111 preceding his lecture that will
feature Wilson's work, in addition to other local artists.
According to Fred Wilson the museum is more than just an objective
mausoleum to dusty old glories that edify history. He uses the museum
as his artistic medium, mixing bits and pieces of the existing objects
already on display with his personal collection of historical
miscellany. The resulting installations demonstrate the power in
subjectivity put forth by the arrangement and curation of the museum.
Creating mock-curatorial perspectives with historic relics, he
attempts to enhance the museum's and the public's awareness of
centuries of Western ideology and oppression.
Wilson's work calls out to the public to recognize this slanted
presentation and realize that there are numerous subtexts and stories
that are untold and often blatantly missing from these displays. In
one of his most famous installations titled "Mining the Museum" (1992)
he creates brilliant scenes that exhibit who's story is being told and
who's interest is served when museums display elegant furniture rather
than instruments of torture, even though the latter may reveal deeper
truths about a society at large. He brings to light the fact that too
often the sophisticated products of white society are displayed with
pride, while white society's tools of oppression are kept absent from
public view and concealed in storage.
It has been said that Fred Wilson's aesthetic commentaries reach
across a wide museological and art historical expanse - from Egyptian
and classical Greek and Roman sculpture to African-American
memorabilia, to the primativist painting of Picasso and to the
uniforms worn by the often black guards charged with the task of
keeping American museums safe and secure.
::ARTIST BIO::
For more information on Fred Wilson and his work, visit the following sites:
www.renabranstengallery.com/WilsonF.html
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/fred_wilson/index.html
www.americansforthearts.org/services/events/postartworks_article.asp?id=846
www.askart.com/artist/W/fred_wilson.asp?ID=106608
Based out of New York City, Fred Wilson is an African-American
conceptual artist living in New York City. Using sculpture,
photography, video, sound, and installation, Wilson "mines" the
history and culture in collections of objects-art, artifacts,
architecture, and other things in the visual world, to reveal the
hidden, emotional, overlooked, or denied societal messages and
personal meanings embedded within them. Wilson has been exhibited
widely and is represented by Metro Pictures. He is best known for his
project Mining the Museum (1992), at the Maryland Historical Society
in Baltimore. The American Association of Museums awarded Mining the
Museum its highest honor, the Curators' Committee Award for
Excellence. Wilson was born in 1954 and received a Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree upon graduating from the State University of New
York, Purchase in 1976.
He has been the recipient of major awards from the National Endowment
for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, American Association of
Museums, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York
Foundation for the Arts. In 1999, he was awarded a fellowship from the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
www.americansforthearts.org/services/events/postartworks_article.asp?id=846&page=2
www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa407.htm
::Articles::
www.renabranstengallery.com/WilsonF_Article_SFBG.html
www.renabranstengallery.com/WilsonF_SanFranChronicle.html
www.renabranstengallery.com/WilsonF_Article_LATimes.html
**Enjoy Troy! Dine at any restaurant in Downtown Troy before the show
and receive $1 off admission at the door with your receipt. For a
listing of restaurants (not all-inclusive) visit
www.goodship.net/troyrestaurants.html
**For disability services for this event, including wheelchair access
to West Hall, please call 276-2746 for information and assistance.
Directions to RPI and West Hall Auditorium:
arts.rpi.edu/content/directions.html
Add to calendar