Visiting Artists Program (VAP) Resource Guides

Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist whose work investigates museological, cultural, and historical issues, which are largely overlooked or neglected by museums and cultural institutions. He is renowned for his interdisciplinary practice that challenges assumptions of history, culture, race, and conventions of display. Wilson’s body of work encompasses sculpture, painting, photography, collage, printmaking, and installation. By reframing objects and cultural symbols, he alters traditional interpretations, encouraging viewers to reconsider social and historical narratives. Wilson’s early work was directed at marginalized histories, exploring how models of categorization, collecting, and display exemplify fraught ideologies and power relations inscribed into the fabric of institutions. His groundbreaking and historically significant exhibition Mining the Museum (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society radically altered the landscape of museum exhibition narratives. As interventions, or “mining,” of the museum’s archive, Wilson re-presented its materials to make visible hidden structures built into the museum system and American society as a whole. Wilson is internationally lauded for his conceptual practice that subverts perception, revealing the undercurrents of historical discourse, ownership, and privilege normalized by institutional practices.

Wilson has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions around the globe, including the retrospective Objects and Installations 1979–2000, organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His work has been exhibited extensively in museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Ohio; Cleveland Museum of Art; Institute of Jamaica, West Indies; Museum of World Culture, Sweden; Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College; British Museum, London; and the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He represented the United States at the Cairo Biennale (1992) and Venice Biennale (2003). Most recently, he presented his new exhibition Afro Kismet at the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, which traveled to London, New York, and Los Angeles. His many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship (1999); Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2006); Ford Foundation’s Art of Change fellowship (2018); and Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award (2019).

Presented in partnership with the Society for Contemporary Art.

Portrait credit: Fred Wilson. Courtesy of the artist.

Gallery Representation

https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/fred-wilson/

‘People Have Woken Up—to a Degree’: Artist Fred Wilson on Progress in the Art World and the Evolving Reception of His Work 
Terence Trouilot | artnet News | September 25, 2019

What Happened When Fred Wilson Dug Beneath a Museum’s Floorboards
Laura Raicovich | Hyperallergic | August 16, 2019

Artist Fred Wilson and the Politics of Display Arrive at Pace in Time for the Mega-Gallery's Next Chapter
Jacoba Urist | Cultured | September 24, 2019

Racism and Erasure in Fred Wilson’s Unearthed Histories
Alan Gilbert | Hyperallergic | August 11, 2018

Objects and Identities: An Interview with Fred Wilson*
Fred Wilson, Jered Sprecher, Amy J Elias | ASAP journal, vol. 2 (1) | p.3-28 | 2017
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login

Mining the Museum: An Installation Confronting History
Lisa G. Corrin | Mining the Museum. Baltimore, MD: New Press. | 1994

art21 - Fred Wilson
Art21’s resources about Fred Wilson’s practice, including videos, texts, and exhibition images.

Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.

SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977-98).