This lesson explores how to use the Fred Wilson Interview in its entirety for students to learn about Wilson, the creative process, and curation as an active endeavor.
Wilson invites young artists to act as curators and to use curation as an artistic act by “bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way [he] wants to see them” through arrangement, nontraditional pairings, wall labels, sounds, and lighting, Wilson questions, and encourages viewers to question, how curators use the language of display to create interpretations of historical truth and artistic value, and reveal what kinds of biases exist in our cultural institutions. Wilson wants viewers of his work to challenge what they know and how they have been taught, and confront the bias that may be found there.
Preview the content before presenting it in your classroom–consider viewing specific portions to address particular discussion questions or conduct a hands-on activity. Prepare your class for what they are about to see. Introduce Fred Wilson, his work, and the key vocabulary words, as well as images of the artworks that Fred Wilson is referring to in the video segments.
Discuss the following BEFORE viewing:
As a class, individually, or in groups, have students contemplate and verbally answer the following questions.
- How can context alter the viewer’s impression of an object?
- How can an artist alter the viewer’s impression of history?
- Does history represent everyone who has participated in it?
Written responses BEFORE viewing:
We are inundated with information all day. How we process that information and use it is different for each person. Please have students write responses to the following questions before you view Fred Wilson's video.
- What types of information do you absorb and which information have you learned to tune out?
- Which structures and systems do you create to help you understand the world we live in?
- What types of structures and systems surround you that would you want to challenge?
Discuss responses as a class.
Viewing the Video
Note: This video is 57:44 long. Please feel free to take more than one class to watch, or share the video link for students to watch on their own.
As the class watches, Fred Wilson's Manacles, A Talk with Teens About HIs Work video, encourage active viewing by pausing the video to discuss, clarify, or expand on what students are seeing and hearing. Encourage students to take notes, sketch, and write down questions while they watch. Please stop the video at the suggested timestamps and use the forllowing questions to faciltate discussions (timestamps are provided):
- How does Fred Wilson’s work challenge ideas about representation? 10:06
- How does cultural identity play a part in Fred Wilson’s work? 30:24
- How does personal history affect Fred Wilson’s work? 56:28
Post Viewing Responses
- Post-viewing, have students process their ideas about what they heard, saw, and discussed by writing or sketching them out.
- Have a round table discussion using the following prompt:
- Fred Wilson references the past, building on themes, critiquing outdated ways of thinking, researching forgotten or contested histories, and learning traditional methods and techniques to explore new ideas and ways of creating. Have students think about the following questions,
- How does Fred Wilson use historical precedent to provide context and inform his work?
- What are some examples of how he compares and contrasts the present day and the past?
- How does the past inform present-day trends and ideas in other art/media/culture that you have seen?
Possible post-viewing, post-discussion hands-on projects:
Here are some suggested ideas for hands-on projects AFTER you have viewed the video:
- Take a mass-produced object (ie. cell phone, book, chair, video game console, mild carton, etc.) and alter it so it becomes a sculpture.
- Choose a contemporary or historical topic or idea and design a memorial for it.
- Transform a found object.
Post-viewing, post-project discussion:
If your class conducts the post-viewing, post-discusion hands-on project, please use the following questions to facilitate a post-project discussion:
- Do well-known artists like Fred Wilson have an obligation to society?
- What is that obligation? Do we have an obligation as his audience?
The following is a list of Fred Wilson exhibitions/artworks referenced in his talk. Please share these links with your students to view Mr. Wilson's work.
Colonial Collection; (1990) Nasher Museum at Duke University, North Carolina
Addiction Display; (1991) Pérez Art Museum, Miami
Guarded View; (1991) Whitney Museum, New York
Grey Area; (1993), Tate, London
Mine/Yours; (1994), Whitney Museum, New York
Atlas; (1995), Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Ota Benga; (2008), Tate, London
Untitled (Flags);(2009), Krakow Witkin Gallery, New York
I Saw Othello's Visage in His Mind; (2013) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Installation: Afro Kismet (2018), Pace Gallery, New York
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds; (2022), Columbus Park, Brooklyn