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