Fred Wilson (artist) facts for kids

Fred Wilson (born 1954) is an American artist. He has African-American and Caribbean family roots. He studied art at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Wilson's art makes people think differently about history, culture, and race. He wants viewers to question the stories we are usually told, especially those from a Western point of view. He won a special "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1999. He also received the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. Wilson has shown his art around the world. He represented the United States at the Cairo Biennial in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003.

Fred Wilson's Art Journey

Fred Wilson went to Music & Art High School in New York. He earned his art degree from SUNY Purchase in 1976. He was the only Black student in his program there. While studying, Wilson worked as a guard at the Neuberger Museum. Later, he worked as an artist in East Harlem.

Wilson says he doesn't need to make things with his hands anymore. He finds joy in bringing objects together that already exist. He likes to arrange them and show them in a new way.

Wilson is an installation artist and an activist. His art often focuses on social justice. He uses museums themselves as his artistic tool. In the 1970s, he worked as a museum educator. He taught at places like the American Museum of Natural History.

In the late 1980s, Wilson started creating "mock museums." These were art shows that looked like real museum exhibits. But they showed how museums might accidentally support racist ideas. Wilson calls this trick "a trompe l'oeil of museum space." This means it's an optical illusion that makes you think you're in a regular museum. This way of working has become a big part of his art.

In 1987, Wilson created No Noa Noa, Portrait of a History of Tahiti. This outdoor artwork showed how Western societies sometimes make people from other cultures seem strange or just for entertainment.

Challenging Museum Displays

One of Wilson's most famous works is Mining the Museum (1992). He worked with the Maryland Historical Society for this project. Wilson rearranged their collection to highlight the history of Native and African Americans in Maryland. He did something similar in 1994 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He moved historical objects and changed how they were displayed. This helped reveal sad parts of the area's African-American past that had been forgotten.

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

In 2007, Fred Wilson was asked to create art for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. He wanted to change a statue of an African American on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. The original statue showed a newly freed slave reaching up. Wilson planned to make a new version where the figure stood proudly, holding a flag of all African countries. This project, called E Pluribus Unum, caused a lot of debate and was eventually not built.

In 2009, Wilson received the Cheek Medal. This award honors people who have made important contributions to museums or the arts.

What Fred Wilson's Art Is About

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

Fred Wilson's art explores and questions how museums usually display art and historical objects. He uses new labels, sounds, lighting, and unusual pairings of objects. He wants viewers to see that changing how something is shown can change its meaning. Wilson's way of putting objects together makes people think about the hidden biases in museums. It also makes them question how museums have shaped our understanding of history and art.

Wilson believes that museums often ignore other meanings of objects. He says if a different meaning isn't the main topic, museums might think it's not important. Wilson uses these objects to look at how race is shown in museums. He also examines the power that cultural places have.

For example, at the 2003 Venice Biennale, he had a person pretend to be an African street vendor. This vendor sold fake designer bags, which were actually Wilson's own designs. He also used "blackamoors" in his show. These are sculptures of Black people often shown as servants. Wilson placed his wooden blackamoors holding tools like 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 hidden world visible.

Mining the Museum Exhibition

Mining the Museum was a special art show by Fred Wilson. It took place from April 4, 1992, to February 28, 1993, at the Maryland Historical Society.

Why Mining the Museum Was Created

The name "Mining the Museum" means that Wilson dug out and uncovered objects from the museum's collections. He used these objects to create his exhibition. The show's goal was to highlight the biases that museums often have. They sometimes leave out or don't properly show the history of oppressed people. Instead, they focus on "important white men." Wilson took the museum's existing items and rearranged them. This helped to show the history of African-American and Native American people in Maryland. This new arrangement used humor and irony to offer a fresh look at colonization, slavery, and the fight to end slavery.

What Was Shown in Mining the Museum

Wilson put historically important objects together in new ways. This helped to point out unfairness in history and how some stories were not properly shown.

• Important Figures: At the entrance, there were three busts (head and shoulders sculptures) of famous people: Napoleon, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay. They were on tall stands. Next to them were empty black stands. These empty stands had the names of three important, but often overlooked, African American Marylanders: Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Banneker, and Harriet Tubman. In the middle of these stands was a silver globe with the word "Truth" on it.

• Renamed Paintings: Wilson found paintings from the 1700s and 1800s that showed African Americans. He renamed these paintings to draw attention to the Black people in them. For example, a painting called "Country Life" was renamed "Frederick Serving Fruit." This highlighted a young African American serving people at a picnic. Other paintings showed enslaved children. Wilson added audio recordings that played on a loop. Visitors could hear the children in the paintings ask important questions. Wilson used these paintings to make visitors see how Black people were often shown, or not shown, in American life.

• Surprising Pairings: The artwork called "metalwork" showed fancy silverware next to slave shackles. This pairing made people think about how the wealth of some people depended on the suffering of others.

• "Cabinet Making": In this piece, old chairs were gathered around a whipping post. This post was used to punish people in the Baltimore City jail. While some thought it was used on enslaved people, it was actually for punishing wife-beaters. However, this misunderstanding helped Wilson's idea that the exhibit was "charged by what you bring to it." Pieces like "Cabinet Making" encouraged visitors to think critically and see things in a new way.

• Other Works: Other artworks included cigar-store Indians turned away from visitors. There was also a KKK mask in a baby carriage. Another piece showed a hunting rifle with posters about runaway slaves. A black chandelier was also hung in the museum's old building just for the show.

The Impact of Mining the Museum

The exhibition was very successful. It made visitors more aware of the racism that is a part of American history. Mining the Museum worked because it made people think without telling them what to think. Over 55,000 people saw Wilson's exhibit. It also helped him create other similar shows across the United States. Critics even gave this new type of art a name: "museumist art."

Fred Wilson at the Venice Biennale

Fred Wilson represented the United States at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. His solo exhibition there was called Speak of Me as I Am. This show included artworks that explored Shakespeare's play Othello. He used objects like mirrors and chandeliers to comment on the play's themes. These artworks have been shown again in later exhibitions. Many of these objects are made of black Murano glass. This shows how Wilson brought the ideas of Othello into a world where race is a central focus.

Another part of the exhibition was Afro Kismet. This art piece used different types of media. It 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. It highlighted the "hidden" history of African people in the Ottoman Empire.

Other Activities

Fred Wilson has been involved in many art organizations. He served 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. He also helped choose the winners of the Rome Prize for 2023–24.

Exhibitions and Artworks

Wilson has had many solo art shows in the United States and other countries. Some of his important solo shows include:

• Primitivism: High & Low (1991) in New York
• Mining the Museum (1992-1993) in Baltimore
• Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000 (2001-2003)
• Speak of Me as I Am (2003) at the 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) and the Liverpool Biennial (1999).

Notable Works in Public Collections

Many of Fred Wilson's artworks are owned by museums and public collections around the world. Here are a few examples:

• Colonial Collection (1990) at the Nasher Museum of Art
• Guarded View (1991) at the Whitney Museum
• Addiction Display (1991) at the Pérez Art Museum Miami
• Queen Esther/Harriet Tubman (1992) at the Jewish Museum
• Grey Area (1993) at the Tate in London
• Speak of Me as I Am: Chandelier Mori (2003) at the High Museum of Art
• Arise! (2004) at the British Museum and Museum of Modern Art
• Ota Benga (2008) at the Tate in London
• Iago's Mirror (2009) at the Des Moines Art Center and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• To Die Upon a Kiss (2011) at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art
• Mother (2022) at LaGuardia Airport