Fred Wilson spoke at the Nasher Tuesday evening as the annual Semans lecturer. The artist deals with museums and objects relationships to such spaces. Before his lecture, I spoke to him about his artistic philosophy, art and more.
First, could you tell me about your work in general, because I know that it falls somewhere in between curatorial and more physical artistic production
Well, just to give you the global story, I make sculpture, and photography and I’m a conceptual artist, so, whatever media, material, or way of doing things suits me is what I am doing. So there’s all that crap that I do in my studio and it gets paid and sold and so that’s one side of what I do; and the other side is working with institutions – well, I also do public commissions too. But the other thing that people really know me for are these museum projects that I do. And having both is great, because one is very much, I don’t want to say collaborative, but I sort of immerse myself in a place, and the other is, I’m in my studio just doing what I want to do. And so it allows me different kinds of experiences and a way to make art.
But the projects that people know me for are these museum projects, which I kind of came to because I worked in museums. And became very interested in how museums display things, because I was working in them. The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan, and others in New York City. And what intrigued me was that they displayed things in very different ways and sometimes, the same kinds of collections – if you look at different ethnographic—well, ethnographic, take away that word. If you look at the work of Africans, Asians, and native people, where they exist in these different kinds of museums—the art museum and the ethnographic museum—they display them, they talk about them in very different ways. And through the projects that I do, I kind of unpack what they are actually doing to the artworks, and saying about art and about culture. And so I had all this nascent stuff in my head, and finally, when I started making these projects, it all became clear. And so a lot of my projects are still to this day just investigations of thoughts that I have, questions that I have when I’m in an institution. And for me, these museum projects are no different than if I’m making an installation of my own handmade things—well, “handmade,” I don’t do that many handmade things—that’s not my real interest anymore—but my real objects that I’ve created one way or another. It’s just that museum space are not a… they’re systematically together in a certain formula, and I like to subvert the formula somewhat and bring out other ideas.
So what do you generally find in subverting that basic museum formula, what is revealed?
Well, it really depends on the institution. It really depends on the museum. Depending on the institution, the country, what kind of collection they have, and the people that I talk to. And so it can be around racial issues, or class issues, or gender issues, or aesthetic issues, political issues—you know, just really the gamut. And generally, whatever I’m thinking about and no one else is talking about. Whatever I’m seeing, and it seems like nobody else is talking about, and I’m just asking these questions and nobody’s answering them for me. So that’ where I start, usually.
Have you ever run into people getting angry with you playing with how they’ve had it organized?
Well the thing is… Yes and no. In the beginning, when I first started doing these kinds of things, people scratched their heads a lot. And also, people were worried that I was going to make fun of them, all these kinds of things. They start with these walls. But the process is such a long process, and certainly at the beginning they’d never seen any of my previous work, and they couldn’t ask other museum people, ‘well what is this, how’s it work?’ So they were the most nervous. But it becomes a very personal thing, I get to know them, they get to know me, and they realize that it’s not about…
But so we get to know each other, and I really ask them a lot of questions about their collections, about their city, you know whatever it is that I don’t know, and we have a dialogue, and we get to know each other. So even if they wouldn’t do the things that I do, or it’s not the kind of exhibition they’d like to see, they understand that by the end, and when the show’s up, they realize that it’s my point of view, particularly, just like they have a point of view. And it’s an exhibition, the sky’s not going to fall, you know, an exhibition that comes and goes. Really, it comes down to just being people, and not ideology And then when you get ideology, past what they think I’m going to do, everything’s fine. And after the show’s up, you know, there are people that still are not in the museum—a visitor or something—who are still no on board. But it really, it comes and it goes. They can have their opinions! That’s fine.
Well, yeah. Walking into museum space can be so daunting, because there’s such a strict demarcation of where you’re allowed to be, and what you’re allowed to touch, right? So did you ever run into trouble even just moving things around, physically?
Well, it’s really interesting when I work in museums, especially American museums—in other countries it’s different but here in America, you know, I’m not a curator, I’m not a registrar, so when I’m in the museum at first, some of the staff doesn’t know what to do with me. They don’t know how to treat me. They know how to deal with all those various parts of the museum, but an artist in the museum—what is that? And so it takes a while before they really relax. And realize that I’ve been around objects. And the first, at first I can go to storage with them, they unlock the doors, we come in, and they’ll handle the objects and show me things. And they quickly realize that you know, I’ve been in museums for a long, long time, I’ve worked in many museums around the world, and as an artist, I’m really concerned with objects and I’m very careful. And also it’s just so time-consuming for them to have to show me things all the time and just do this! Eventually, it’s basically about their comfort level. Eventually they hand me the white gloves, and the keys, and I come and go as I please. And that’s a great point, when that happens. It takes a while, but it does happen. And they see me as another museum professional. And then I hear all the dirt, all the things of that museum—which I never tell. They love talking to me because, you know, I’m in the museum, but I’m not a staff member, and so they don’t worry with me messing with their relationships and the hierarchies, they can just tell me whatever they want to tell me! And it just goes in, it doesn’t go anywhere, I leave, I don’t kiss and tell, so I’ve somewhat become a museum therapist, too.
So are there any projects that you particularly liked?
I do, you know, artists—you like the last thing you did. There was one I did in Sweden and I’m very happy with it because actually a lot of people saw it in Sweden and I’m always surprised when I hear that someone was there and saw the exhibition. But I don’t have great documentation of it, like a great book, so I think about it a lot because I just don’t want to keep remembering it—a bit of it was in Art 21, which I was really pleased about because I didn’t get a catalogue for that show. But it was a really—I got to really use the space and they had a budget so I could change the level of the floor and do all these built-ins, and they had a really great ethnographic collection.
They’re all really great experiences, for one reason or another. Sometimes the staff is just there for me, and just makes things happen. And sometimes it’s just—you know they all have their different things. And there are some that have been very impactful on me, just personally. I did a project in Jamaica not too long ago—one of the last projects I did, about slavery in Jamaica—and it was very personally… it just got me! My family’s not from Jamaica, but just the history of slavery there kind of blindsided me, because I know so much about it here, so after years of knowing about it, I guess it had numbed me to some of the horrors of it, just because, it just is the American story. But there, just reading diaries of slave owners and just their historical record—which I got into the national archive to see-- it really, it kind of got me. It really got me. For months afterwards I was quite shaken by the experience. And it shook up people there, too, because you know, when you make art, whatever happens just comes right through you. And you know, and they had never done a show about slavery before. And so I thought, well, you know, it’s a black country, they know about slavery. But they were mostly focused on independence. So it didn’t really go that far back. And they might have learned a little about the it in gradeschool, but so it really affected them too. All different classes. Folks who live in the forest, and the people who live in the really wealthy neighborhoods, and it really affected them and that was really quite an amazing experience.
Do you think you could do a similar project in the South?
You know, I’ve done a couple of projects, and I think I could obviously do others in different parts of the South—each place has a very specific story, a specific twist on the story. So I could easily do that. And it really depends on what I find. That’s really how I work—I go in tabula rosa and what’s there affects me. I don’t start with a particular idea. Jamaica was having a very specific intent—it was the date of the big end of the slave trade with the British Empire. So this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. So generally I just go in and look at the collections, meander through the collections and talk to the people and that’s how the ideas come. And if slavery’s the main narrative that strikes me, if it’s not being talked about, or if there are aspects of it that I think I want to think about, then that’s what the subject is. But not necessarily. I certainly think I could do another project like that in the South, because there’s so many stories to be told. But I may not be the main story for me at the moment.
Even here at Duke, with the Nasher, are there questions that you feel you’d like to have answered?
No—I don’t have any questions yet! You know, it takes me a while to come up with those questions, a while to sort of stay with the collection, and you know, sometimes it takes me several months. My first project, I did over a year. And after that I never had that much time to do it in over a year, I usually have like three month projects. So I don’t make snap decisions, I try not to let my initial ideas by the ones that I just say, ‘that’s it.’ I usually try to write everything down as I experience them, and then see after several months which ones seem to be really important, still. And important to the community—not just me and a couple artists in New York City. So I don’t… I never can really say what’s going to be an important thing until I’m in the place for quite a while.
So how long does that process take, in general? You said that the first time it was a year.
Well, my first project was in New York City so I could just keep coming and going and it was really easy by train. After that point, I kind of honed it down to three months, because that’s the time I could afford to travel. It just seemed like that was the least amount of time I could do a project. And so I’d be there working for two months and then go away, and they’d put all my ideas into how they wanted it to… you know, things I needed to be built, or the sound equipment, or whatever it needed they would get that ready and I’d come back for the third month to really put it together. But that’s a PDQ show. If you know curators they work on it for years, and why they expect for me to do it in a few months, I don’t know! So I’m always looking for that really long project.
Is there anything that you would really love to do now?
Well, you know, I always say, what would I want to do? And where would I want to do it? And usually if I start to think about it, things start to happen. I… I’d like to do something at the Metropolitan. Something happened—I was going to work with the Metropolitan, I had started doing the researcher, and then the curator who was really involved with it moved on, and so I was kind of left without a curator, so it didn’t happen. But it could happen again. And I’ve always wanted to work with a zoo, to do something different, you know? Because I have some thoughts about zoos, and I want to really get into that—how they collect, and how they display, and what are all the meanings, and for whom and that kind of thing.
What do you think something like that would look like, spatially?
Well, it would be fantastic if I could build a space, but I imagine that involves moving animals around and things like that that I can’t imagine that would happen—I mean it would be great! Let’s put that out there, but I always imagine that it would be some sort of mediating device that would alter the already-sitting zoo; either sound, or labeling, or I don’t know what else—it depends on what they have out there besides the animals. Or whatever, I don’t know! That’s the exciting part! To get into this entirely different environment that is also about display, in the end, and see what I can make of that.
As of now, do you feel more compelled to do more of the curatorial/display work, or more of the object creation work?
I think it’s always been the same, I like doing it all. And maybe that’s the problem with me, I like doing everything! And so it really just depends on everybody else. Because I never actually ask to go to a museum, I wait to be asked, and so you know. Because they really have to want me in there, it’s like going through someone’s closets, or basements, and looking in their drawers. And they have to really want me. So I wait to be asked. And if it’s a collection where I’ll go and look, and if it’s not something that appeals to me, or it’s a small collection that I can’t really—you know, it’s about my palette, my palette for the museum or collection. So if there’s not that much there, if it’s only red or green or blue, one color, then how much can you—yes, you can do something there, but there might be someplace else. So I’m going for very different experiences. I’m trying to find places that have an unusual collection but they have other things also, or historical thing that are connected with it. I don’t like doing the same things over and over so I wait for those special experiences. And I have things on the table, that may be coming down the pipe, things like that. And sometimes things fall away.
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