Fred Wilson (artist) facts for kids

Fred Wilson (born 1954) is an American artist with African-American and Caribbean family roots. He earned his art degree from Purchase College, State University of New York. Wilson's art makes people think about history, culture, and race in new ways. He encourages viewers to question old ideas, especially those from colonial times.

Wilson received a special "genius grant" called the MacArthur Fellowship in 1999. He also won the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. He represented the United States at important art events like the Biennial Cairo in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003. In 2008, Wilson became a trustee (a member of the governing board) at the Whitney Museum.

Fred Wilson's Art Journey

Fred Wilson went to Music & Art High School in New York. He then studied at SUNY Purchase, graduating in 1976. He was the only Black student in his program there. While studying, Wilson worked as a guard at the Neuberger Museum of Art. From 1978 to 1980, he worked as an artist in East Harlem. This was part of a government program that helped artists find jobs.

Wilson has said that he doesn't feel a strong need to create things with his hands anymore. He finds satisfaction in bringing together objects that already exist. He likes to arrange them and present them in a way that shows his ideas.

How He Uses Museums

Wilson is an installation artist and an activist for social justice. He uses museums themselves as his way of making art. In the 1970s, he worked as a freelance educator for several museums, including the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Starting in the late 1980s, Wilson used his knowledge of museums to create "mock museums." These were art displays that showed how museums might accidentally or purposefully support racist ideas. He calls this method "a trompe l'oeil of museum space." This means he creates an illusion that makes you see the museum space differently. This approach has become a main focus of his work.

In 1987, Wilson created an outdoor piece called No Noa Noa, Portrait of a History of Tahiti. This work showed how Western societies sometimes make people from other cultures seem like strange "sideshow creatures." He wanted to highlight that these people are often not taken seriously.

Mining the Museum Exhibition

Artemis / Bast (1992) at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2022

One of Wilson's most famous works is Mining the Museum. He created this in 1992 with the Contemporary Museum Baltimore. For this project, Wilson rearranged items from the Maryland Historical Society's collection. He wanted to highlight the history of Native Americans and African Americans in Maryland.

In 1994, he continued this idea with Insight: In Site: In Sight: Incite in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Here, he moved historical objects and changed how they were labeled and lit. This helped to reveal parts of the site's sad African-American past that had been forgotten due to time, lack of knowledge, and racism.

In 2001, a big show of Wilson's work, Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979–2000, traveled to many museums. For the 2003 Venice Biennale, Wilson created an installation inspired by a line from Shakespeare's play Othello. His detailed work in Venice, called "Speak of Me as I Am," focused on how Africans were shown in Venetian culture.

In 2007, Fred Wilson was asked to create a piece for the Cultural Trail in Indianapolis, Indiana. He suggested changing the only African American figure on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. This figure showed a recently freed slave reaching up to Lady Liberty. Wilson wanted to create a new version where the African American figure looked proud and strong, holding a flag made of all African countries' flags. This idea, called E Pluribus Unum, caused a lot of debate and was eventually not built.

In 2009, Wilson received the Cheek Medal from the Muscarelle Museum of Art. This award honors people who have made important contributions to museums, performing arts, or visual arts.

In 2011, a book called Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader was published. It collected writings and interviews about his work, focusing on his most important exhibitions.

Main Ideas in Wilson's Art

Wilson's unique approach is to look closely at, question, and take apart the usual ways art and historical items are displayed in museums. He uses new labels, sounds, lighting, and unusual pairings of objects. This helps viewers see that when you change how something is presented, its meaning also changes.

By putting surprising objects together, Wilson makes viewers think about the hidden biases and limits of cultural institutions. He shows how these institutions have shaped our understanding of history, art, and how things are displayed. Wilson believes that museums often ignore other meanings of objects. He says they consider these meanings unimportant if they are not the main focus of an exhibition. Wilson uses these objects to explore how race is shown in museums and to examine the power of cultural institutions.

For example, for his display at the 2003 Venice Biennale, he hired a tourist to pretend to be an African street vendor. This vendor sold fake designer bags that were actually Wilson's own designs. He also included "blackamoors" in the show. These are sculptures of Black people often shown as servants. Wilson placed his wooden blackamoors holding tools like acetylene torches and fire extinguishers. He pointed out that these figures are very common in Venice, but most people don't even notice them. He wanted to make this "invisible world" visible.

Mining the Museum Details

Mining the Museum was an exhibition by Fred Wilson that ran from April 4, 1992, to February 28, 1993, at the Maryland Historical Society.

Why the Exhibition Was Created

The title "Mining the Museum" means that Wilson "dug out" and uncovered objects from the Maryland Historical Society's collections to create this show. The exhibition aimed to address how museums often leave out or under-represent people who have been treated unfairly. Museums often focus mainly on "important white men." Wilson took the museum's existing collection and rearranged it. This highlighted the history of African-American and Native American people in Maryland. This new arrangement used humor and irony to offer a fresh view of colonization, slavery, and the fight to end slavery.

What Was Displayed

Wilson put historically important items next to each other to show past injustices and how these stories were not properly shown in museums. At the entrance, there were three busts (sculptures of heads and shoulders) of famous people: Napoleon, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay. These were on tall stands. To their left, there were empty black stands with the names of three important, often overlooked, African American Marylanders: Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Banneker, and Harriet Tubman. In the middle of these stands, there was a silver-plated copper globe with the word "Truth" written on it, inside a display case.

Wilson also took paintings from the 1700s and 1800s that showed African Americans from the museum's collection. He renamed these paintings to draw attention to the African Americans in them. For example, an oil painting called "Country Life" was renamed "Frederick Serving Fruit." This emphasized the young African American serving "well-dressed whites at a picnic." Other paintings showing enslaved children were paired with audio recordings. Visitors could hear these children in the paintings ask powerful questions. Wilson used these paintings to make visitors realize how strange it is that African Americans were often shown but also made to seem invisible in American life.

An installation called "metalwork" showed fancy silverware next to slave shackles. This was to highlight that the wealth of some people could not have happened without the suffering of others. Similarly, "Cabinet Making" showed old chairs gathered around a whipping post. This piece encouraged visitors to think critically and gain a new perspective. Other works included cigar-store Indians turned away from visitors, a KKK mask in a baby carriage, a hunting rifle with posters about runaway slaves, and a black chandelier made for the exhibition.

The Exhibition's Effect

The exhibition was very successful. It made visitors more aware of the racism that is a part of American history. Mining the Museum was effective because it suggested ideas rather than just telling people what to think. More than 55,000 people saw Wilson's exhibition. It helped him create other similar shows across the United States. Critics even gave this new type of art a name: "museumist art."

Venice Biennale 2003

Wilson represented the United States at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He presented a solo exhibition called Speak of Me as I Am in the American pavilion. Some of his works were inspired by Shakespeare's play Othello. These pieces used objects like mirrors and chandeliers to comment on the play's themes. These works were later shown in another exhibition, "Fred Wilson: Sculptures, Paintings, and Installations, 2004–2014." These objects are made of black Murano glass. This shows how Wilson brought the ideas of Othello into a world where race is not ignored but is a central focus.

Another installation in the exhibition was Afro Kismet. This mixed-media work focused on how race was shown in Venice, especially the history of Black people there. The installation included prints, paintings, and other items from the Pera Museum collections. It highlighted the "forgotten" or "hidden" history of African people in the Ottoman Empire.

Other Activities

From 1988 to 1992, Wilson was on the board of directors at Artists Space in New York. He is currently on the board of trustees for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Wilson also helped choose the winners of the Rome Prize for the 2023–24 cycle.

Exhibitions

Wilson has had many solo shows and exhibitions both in the United States and around the world. Some of his important solo shows include:

• Primitivism: High & Low (1991) at Metro Pictures Gallery, New York
• Mining the Museum (1992-1993) at the Maryland Historical Society and Contemporary Museum Baltimore
• Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000 (2001-2003), which started at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, Baltimore
• Speak of Me as I Am (2003) at the American pavilion for the 50th Venice Biennale
• Fred Wilson: Works 2004-2011 (2012-2013) at the Cleveland Museum of Art

He has also been part of many group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (1993), Liverpool Biennial (1999), Glasstress (2009, 2011), and the NGV Triennial (2020).

Notable Works in Public Collections