Who is Fred Wilson?
Fred Wilson is an American artist who describes himself as of "African, Native American, European and Amerindian" descent. Wilson was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1954, and lives and works in New York.
Wilson is best known for installing site-specific art pieces that offer social commentary on cultural institutions. In his formative project Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson (1992–93) at the Maryland Historical Society, in collaboration with The Contemporary in Baltimore, Wilson installed hundreds of museum objects in confrontational juxtapositions, such as polished repoussé silverware next to a rusty pair of slave shackles. The installation highlighted both Maryland’s history of racial violence and the Historical Society’s selective omission of that history. The artist continues to explore ideas like these through more object-based work.
Wilson’s work investigates cultural and historical issues by reframing objects and cultural symbols by altering their traditional interpretations, encouraging viewers to reconsider social and historical narratives. Wilson’s interdisciplinary practice challenges assumptions of history, culture, race, and conventions of display. Wilson encourages viewers to examine how curators shape interpretations of historical truth, and artistic value through the language of display, and what kinds of biases cultural institutions express, while presenting critical questions about the politics of erasure and exclusion.
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds
Wilson’s installation in Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn, Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, creates a conversation about the sculpture, monuments, and buildings in the heart of Brooklyn’s civic center. It is positioned between a sculpture of Henry Ward Beecher, a 19th-century Congregationalist clergyman (and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe), known for his support of the abolition of slavery, and a statue of Christopher Columbus, as well as the Kings County Supreme Court building. This juxtaposition encourages viewers to explore how historical issues of justice, freedom, slavery, and mass incarceration relate to the present.
Visitors to Columbus Park will see two elaborate gilded cages and ask themselves: Who is looking in? Who is looking out? Who is free? Who is trapped? Who has the power to decide who has the freedom to be inside and outside?
Fred Wilson core practices
Wilson often mines museum archives to bring objects and stories that challenge dominant cultural narratives to public view. His exhibitions,
- Create space for marginalized voices and perspectives.
- Reframe objects and cultural symbols, altering traditional interpretations and encouraging viewers to reconsider their own preconceptions of social and historical narratives.
- Reveal that the narratives cultural institutions have favored are a conscious choice, and to ignore alternative narratives was another choice.
- Appropriates curatorial methods and strategies to investigate how interpretations of historical truth and cultural value are shaped by institutions and systems of display.
- Exposes Eurocentric bias.
- Conducts extensive community outreach and historical research in the places where they are shown.
General questions to discuss while engaging with this curriculum:
- What is the purpose of a museum?
- What is the role of a curator?
- How do museums inform our understanding of history, art, science, etc.?
- Do you have a collection? What do you collect?
- How do you share, display, and store your collection?
- What do others collect?
- What makes an object valuable?
During the session, one of the students asked Fred Wilson, "What was it like being a Black artists?" Here is his answer.