(upbeat music) - [Host] Welcome everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(upbeat music) (audience clapping) - Welcome to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

And today has been a dream long in the making.

We bring you sculptor and conceptual artist Fred Wilson.

The journey to this stage for Fred has been a long road.

And we've actually been working on this.

I went back and looked at all the email chain.

This started in July of 2015.

So a big thank you to Stamps Professor Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo and UMMA's Laura De Becker who have persevered on this road with me.

And a big thank you to our dedicated partner, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA, and our series partners, Detroit Public Television, PBS Books, WNET's All Arts, and Michigan Public.

Highlighting our great partner at UMMA today.

Tomorrow is their first Feel Good Friday of the season.

That's from 7:00 to 10:00 PM.

And you can also, you can see the new show there, "Silver Lining: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection."

And we will also host a special Penny Stamps Speaker Series event tomorrow evening there with Dr. Liz Andrews, who is the exhibition curator and the director of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

This talk will be in the Helmet Stern Auditorium at 7:30 PM.

And after that, there's lots more at Feel Good Friday.

You can go play bingo with a twist.

Immerse yourself in a garden of flowers.

Visiting artist Philippa Pham Hughes's installation, "Hey, We Need to Talk!"

And so much more.

So that's a great thing to do tomorrow night.

And then on Saturday, folks, do visit the Stamps Gallery.

There is going to be a special opening reception of "Mini Museum: The Sum of Small Parts."

This exhibit is tied to a Stamps class, school class.

This is the gallery as a site for social change course.

And this showcases thought provoking pieces all under three inches in size.

So this is free and open to the public.

That's on Saturday.

It'll run through October 5th at the Stamps Gallery.

The reception, I'm sorry, being Saturday.

It actually opened today.

That Saturday at 6:00 PM for the reception with goodie bags.

And while you're there, if you have not already checked out the gallery's current exhibition, Kelly Church and Cherish Parish, it is stunning and you must see it.

Please do remember to silence your cell phones.

We will have a Q&A here today as part of Fred's talk.

So when he's ready for questions, he will invite you.

You'll see there's microphones at the end of the aisle here and at the end of the other center aisle.

So come up and line up at those microphones and we'll see how many questions he can get to.

And now, for some words of introduction, we have a new addition to our community here.

Robin K. Williams is the new curator of modern and contemporary art at UMMA.

She came to us recently from Austin, Texas where she was the curator at the Contemporary Austin.

And some of you may remember her as prior to that, she was curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

And now, she's with us.

Please welcome Robin K. Williams.

(audience clapping) - Hello.

Thank you Chrisstina for the introduction.

And thank you for all of your efforts in bringing us together tonight.

Thank you to the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design for the ongoing support of this truly outstanding and impactful speaker series.

And thank you everyone for being here tonight.

What a privilege I have in introducing tonight's speaker, Fred Wilson.

It is a rare person who so profoundly affects the field of practice in the way that Fred Wilson has done within the fields of both contemporary art and museums.

To start with, in his groundbreaking 1992 exhibition, "Mining the Museum" at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, Wilson ingeniously expanded contemporary conceptual art and institutional critique practices to examine how museums inculcate societal norms.

Conducting extensive research within the historical societies' collections and archives, he used curatorial methods to create startling juxtapositions.

For example, by installing slave shackles in the same museum between the spine silver vessels.

Juxtapositions which disrupted conventions surrounding both the content and modes of presentation one would normally encounter at the Historical Society.

Through this targeted intervention, which examined coded display techniques within a specific museum, Wilson's exhibition exposed how museums in general have historically reinforced dominant power structures by celebrating white cultural perspectives while suppressing the lived realities and achievements of African Americans, Native Americans, and other marginalized peoples.

This watershed exhibition, along with Wilson's ongoing work addressing musicological cultural and historical issues, has compelled many museums in the US and worldwide to confront crucial questions regarding the relationships between power, representation, and identity.

Questions about how cultural narratives are told, whose stories are voiced and whose are silenced, and about the processes around how such decisions are made.

These questions have deeply informed UMMA's outlook and programs from the institution's commitments to anti-racism and allyship to recent exhibitions such as "Unsettling Histories," "Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism," and "Andrea Carlson: Future Cash."

Moreover, the spirit of inquiry into the institution's history and future, likewise inspired by Wilson's work, animates ongoing conversations about what a university art museum can be.

Since the 1990s, Wilson has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions around the world.

And his work is included in more than 50 international museum collections.

He has been awarded the New York City Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture, an honorary doctorate from Northwestern University, and in 1999, the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant.

His accolades are far too many to exhaust.

Needless to say, we are thrilled that he is here with us tonight.

So please join me in welcoming Fred Wilson.

(audience clapping) - Whoa.

Hello there.

I was told I have 50 minutes.

So I will begin with voluminous amount of information.

But measure it for this occasion.

So let's get going.

I love museums.

I've always loved museums as a child.

I went to them all the time.

I had questions about them even then.

However, lucky for me.

I get to answer back.

Now, I just have to learn the...

There we go.

Oh, the name of it.

I start with this piece that I did, oh gosh, 1991.

And because I was a guard at my college museum for a bit.

I was a student, but also a guard.

And I would be there during the day and I'd be there at night.

And, you know, and, but it became very interesting how the role of a guard is in an institution and how the public either sees you or not.

And so I really enjoyed sort of becoming, being able to speak back to this kind of situation.

These are the guard uniforms of four major museums in New York City.

Don't ask me how I got their outfits.

Some of them would not even entertain the idea because, of course, I could put it on and come in and steal something, which makes sense.

So... What was I gonna say about this?

Just had a mind stop.

But anyway, it was, this was at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

And while it was there, all the guards would like to stand next to it and get photographed.

(audience laughing) But really, you're invisible.

And I think purposely so.

However, you're not necessarily stupid.

So it's, when you are approached as a professional in what you're doing and your ideas about what you think you're seeing, it's often appreciated.

But this project that I did, it's called "Guarded View."

So many of the guards in, you know, at least on the East Coast and the West Coast, are people of color.

Particularly Black men and Black women at the Whitney.

And you're just invisible.

And that function of being there to kind of make it very, people aware that there is this person there, guarding things, but also being invisible, is a very strange activity because people don't necessarily talk to you.

And you don't necessarily want to be talked to all the time.

But it is just an unusual position to be in.

So that's kind of where this came from, my experience.

And then getting to know guards in various museums.

I eventually was on the board of the Whitney Museum for, what was it, 15 years or something like that, and got to know all the guards.

And, you know, they also became part of the museum in a very, you know, unique and prominent way.

And they still are.

So I forgot.

I'd just jump right into it because I do only have 50 minutes.

This project, "Mining the Museum," I had no idea how it would change my life.

But when I was invited by a contemporary museum in Baltimore, called the Contemporary, to do a project with any museum, 'cause I knew I was interested in museums and I had worked in museums in fact.

I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the education department and at Museum of Natural History in the education department.

And it's quite interesting, those two museums, you know, these large, you know, architectural marvels that were around the same time, same age.

But how people interact in them is often different.

In the Met, you know, there are large numbers of people there, but they're generally respectful and looking at things and such.

At the Museum of Natural History, also respectful.

But because of all of the children, it has a much more frenetic environment.

Just fascinating.

So when I was invited to this museum in Baltimore, Maryland, it was a quite a different situation because the museum itself was not necessarily, it was a public museum with public money.

But the public just never went to the museum.

And they were fine with that.

So when I was looking around at... - Are you having trouble with the clicker?

- No.

- Okay.

- Oh, can everyone hear me?

I should ask that.

(audience talking indistinctly) No?

(audience talking indistinctly) Okay, okay.

Louder.

Okay.

So when I got there, I didn't, when I got to Baltimore, I didn't immediately run to the Historical Society.

But they said, "You can talk to every director of all the museums.

They will make that happen.

And you can choose the institution."

And I talked with them.

And it was interesting.

And the collections are great.

But then I went and talked with the people at the Historical Society.

And it was clear that this was a private kind of club.

And so, as I looked around the space, the spaces, I felt, you know, a little uncomfortable there.

What's it doing here?

This was one of the galleries that you saw immediately in the space.

And so it was a interesting part of the museum.

However, I just didn't feel comfortable in some ways.

I only, throughout the whole project, my best friends were the guards.

They were all African American.

I eventually came very close with the chief curator who was not the type I ever thought I would be communing with.

But she was, she turned out to be a really lovely woman.

However, they were in their fiefdom in this building.

It was like a separate world.

And however, I decided to sort of look a little deeper at these institutions, at this institution by looking in their storage rooms in the basement and just looking at all these things.

And they were, didn't know what I was doing.

Anyway, I, the what, not the rich story, the, oh gosh, the PR person was getting very frustrated because she hadn't, she wanted to promote the show, but she had nothing.

I was still just looking at things and going through things.

You know, I was new to the place.

And so that was, so she was on my case to come up with a title of the show.

And the director, in his wisdom, said, "Well, why don't you call it Museum Held Hostage?"

(audience laughing) I said, "No, we're gonna get along here.

It's gonna be fine.

It's gonna be fine."

(audience laughing) He was a little nervous.

Just a little, little nervous.

So I did look in all the nooks and corners of the museum and spoke to the guards, spoke to the woman at the front desk, spoke to the people who were in the library to get to understand what this place was about.

And so I found in, deep in storage this, this truth thing.

And I figured, well, I wanted it to be the most central thing as you came in up the stairs, because, you know, where's the truth in museums?

Whose truth?

And I wanted people to sort of think about that.

It's surrounded by these empty plastic mounts.

And there's a label for that too.

You know, plastic mounts.

Maker unknown.

Somebody made them.

And I surrounded them with things, other things I found.

These busts.

These pedestals.

The busts are of three, maybe two great man.

You have here, in my thinking, you have, let's see if I can point.

Oh, where is it?

Where is the pointer?

Where is the pointer?

Oh, why is the pointer not working?

Oh, here he is.

'Cause it's a different thing.

Okay.

So this is Henry Clay.

Really interesting and respectful man.

This is known in Baltimore in his day.

This is Andrew Jackson.

Not my favorite character in history.

(audience laughing) And in the center.

Oh, I know you just know it's who this is.

It's Napoleon.

Now, I didn't know Napoleon ever made it to Baltimore.

And he didn't.

But anyway.

But since he was there, I thought I'd put it out as, you know, representing the museum.

On the other side, I found these other three pedestals without busts.

But I had labels for them.

Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass.

All three from Baltimore.

Nothing about them in the Maryland Historical Society.

So I just try to have that without saying much.

Gives you a sense of what the Historical Society was about.

Oh, and they had a lot of cigar store Indians.

And I brought 'em all together.

Put them facing the wall.

Actually, this, the part of the wall was the Chesapeake Bay.

And before I did my project, there was a duck decoy show there.

But it was a map of the Chesapeake Bay.

And I added the Native tribes onto that map.

I also got to know the Native community in Baltimore and asked to borrow some photographs of their families.

And I put them on the wall with these fake Indians.

And at the opening, they all came.

Everyone came to this show.

A very unusual group of historians and just people who liked, you know, history and Native people and others.

They also had a box of a, a big box that Benjamin Latrobe had of arrowheads.

I didn't do much with them.

I just put them out as something that was in the museum.

And I went around looking at all the different paintings.

And there's something funny about a lot of those paintings.

At least I found kind of unusual or just not being talked about much.

Oh, let me just say...

This one here.

Oh, come on.

I can't get this to...

I may have been pressing the wrong button.

How about that one?

Oops.

Hmm.

Oh, it's the wrong thing.

(audience laughing) This painting was not on view.

I took it out of storage.

It was a rip painting.

I was looking for a rip painting.

And this one had a rip across the man's face.

So I said, "Well, I'll take it."

And didn't learn much about the man.

Let me see.

Here's another painting that was there.

And I, that was the right in the entrance of the museum.

I had to move it to my floor.

And there was, I thought there was something funny about the painting.

And so I lit it up.

I had lights on either side and voices coming out.

There are these two Black boys in the periphery.

And, you know, everybody's name was on the label.

But not his or the other boy's name.

And so I brought together a bunch of, of course, he's a slave.

Enslaved children.

I brought together many local school kids and we sat and talked about what they thought that they were saying, they were thinking.

And they came up with things like, you know, "Who comes when I'm afraid?

Who washes my back?

Where's my mother?"

And so I had, as you stepped in front of the painting, you can see I lit these boys up and then also had audio tapes of these children saying these things.

But interestingly, let me see if I have another image of this, of another one.

Okay.

This one was by the door.

And so also asked the children, what would he be saying?

"Am I your friend?

Am I your brother?"

And I added, "Am I your pet?"

And easily, he could have been all three in the years of slavery.

The director said to me, "Wow, I'd never noticed that Black child."

The painting was by the door.

And he walked by it every day.

What can you do?

You can just reveal things and hope that people get a sense of it.

Get a sense of it.

This painting is called "Country Life."

And it's by an artist named Ernest Fisher.

And I put this one in the exhibition as well.

And on the other side, I, oh, isn't that, oh, press the wrong button again.

So that label was the museum's label.

And my label was on the other side.

It says, "Frederick serving Fruit."

Could have been Frederick Douglass there.

My name's Fred.

You never know.

And so just trying to reveal things that are very much in your face.

Oops.

And they have incredibly beautiful repousse silver.

It was very, you know, particularly in Baltimore, that's what they have.

And so, but, and the museum, everything in the museum was lit, was, went on view.

They talked about the material culture, the material that things were made of, and not necessarily histories, but just the material of things.

And I, looking in their storage again, I found, you know, slave shackles.

And under metal work, 1793 to 1880.

This was the display of that particular moment.

Oh.

Yes, there.

Oops.

If I can go back again.

Yeah.

And now this was a really, all of this is really a kind of a shock to the system for many people there.

And I, looking through the collections, I got the best kind of ideas about what they had or at least, you know, histories from the guards, all African American.

And here, under modes of transport, we have the sedan chair of the last royal governor of Maryland.

And there's a painting which you can't see of who had to carry it around.

And then a sloop ship in the far corner there.

That was a slave ship after the war of 1812.

And documents in the case about that, about the buying and selling.

And then these two baby carriages.

And in textile storage, I came across this Klan hood.

Anonymously donated.

I mean, wouldn't you?

And, you know, everybody was kind of shocked about it.

But they all knew that it was there.

And so this, "Modes of Transport" was the name of this.

And on the wall, I had a photograph of Black nannies with white babies 'cause I was just thinking, these kind of, the ideology of this, of the Klan basically is put over you.

You grow up in it.

It's not, you're not born thinking that way.

And here, we have some wonderful chairs that I thought seemed to be, looked like members, for members of various parts of the society.

And then I found in the basement in two pieces this whipping post.

You know, one of the chief curator said I could... "Oh, he found the whipping pose."

Twisting her pearls.

(audience laughing) Give me that whipping post.

(audience laughing) And it was used, actually it was used till 1958.

And for, actually it was used as a kind of a whipping, wife beaters.

That was this last thing that it was used for.

And it was in front of the city jail.

City, no, city hall, city jail.

Either one.

So I was just going around finding things and putting them on view and hoping that people would start to think about some of these issues.

There were these run-away broad signs.

But they were in files in the offices.

And prominently with the name of who is trying to catch a particular person and the person.

And, you know, even within the writing of it, you know, the descriptions were quite interesting.

One of them said, "He has been ruptured and wears a dress."

This is so you can sort of pick him out of a crowd, I guess.

Or, you know, just plain out get 'em.

And these, you know, the thing is, in Baltimore, the families are all the same.

They're still there.

This is definitely a local history museum.

Families of both the Blacks and the whites, I should say.

And this was the doll's house, you know, in the children's area.

And one of the docents said, "Oh, no.

Not the doll's house."

They saw where I was going with this.

And they were just kind of freaked out.

(audience laughing) Freaked out.

So the, in this house, the female doll, the white female doll was in the bedroom.

The Black female doll was in the kitchen.

The white male doll was in the parlor, sitting.

And the Black male doll was at the door.

I doubt children organized them this way.

But that's what it was.

And I decided to sort of do a little intervention by putting this larger Black doll that they had facing off with the master of the house.

I was, got some information, I was, they also had the Nat Turner's rebellion in a book form.

But actually, it was not the actual book.

It was a woman who remembered the rebellion.

And so I just thought this was a, sort of diorama for that whole moment for me now.

Oh, there he is.

Now, the woman who attended to the doll's house, she just couldn't help.

She said, "Not the doll's house.

It's nothing sacred."

I said, "Well, give me that doll's house."

(audience laughing) They were in their own little world, their bubble, their own little bubble.

I remember going there when the, and I'm sorry if any of you are are son, one of the sons of Cleveland.

But they had a conference.

And the director came to the door to greet me.

This is before my show.

And then when we finished talking, he turned around and walked into the crowd and kind of disappeared amongst all these men in suits.

It was like, wow.

Here, this was the, I had another gallery with things that were made by African Americans in that early time period that were just sitting as periphery, as decoration.

But they were actually, you know, baskets and ceramic, bottles of water, and things like that.

But this is the last room.

And on the table is a book written by Benjamin Banneker, who was a free Black man in the 1700s, who surveyed Washington DC for Thomas Jefferson, who was a mathematician and astronomer.

And so he wrote this book and gave it to Thomas Jefferson.

And the first line of the book says, "Dear Thomas Jefferson," I suppose.

"I truly, I wholeheartedly acknowledge I'm a member of the African race."

And to me it was like, for a Black man in the 1700s to say this to the president of the United States was a pretty nice way to end the project.

He was an astronomer so I had various constellations that showed that, computer tells you how long ago this project was.

But anyway.

And she's reading different diary entries in that book that he wrote of like, who tried to kill him and, you know, other situations that he found himself in.

So this project, the reason why the project actually happened is because the American Association of Museums Conference was being held in Baltimore that year.

So all these museum professionals were coming to Baltimore.

And it was being hosted by the Historical Society.

And he didn't have a special show.

So that's why when I came up, they said, "Yeah, we'll do it."

He had no idea what I was gonna do.

And that's how this project spread around the country.

How it was born.

And it was very positive reception by our, their fellow museum people.

However, not everybody was pleased.

I happened to find this as, when I was coming here.

A letter to the director from one of the trustees.

He said, first thing he said, which is quite nice.

Where is it?

Where'd it go?

Hmm.

I'm so sorry.

Shoot.

"It has been my pleasure to belong to the Maryland Historical Society for some years.

About 50, I believe.

And I have served on the council before trustees were invented and on various committees.

I have always had a warm place in my heart for it, even if monetary contributions were not as large as I would've liked.

But I thought of it as, thought of it with love and admiration as if I were living in 1844.

But as chairman of the Committee of the Society of the Cincinnati in Maryland, to set up an exhibit for the meeting of MHS on May 9th, May, 1992, it has, I have been quite unhappy."

My show was up when he wrote this.

"It was all going to be easy, I was told.

The area was to include the lobby outside the auditorium, the Revolutionary War Room off the lobby, and this other gallery.

Then Mining the Museum exhibit had to be set up to replace Ducking in the Chesapeake."

Oh, how horrible.

I can't believe that.

(audience laughing) "The Historical Society had a policy of not displaying a one man show of a living artist's work.

That is, yet this is one."

And in parentheses, "If he is an artist."

"And in my book, he's a disgrace to the MHS."

Maryland Historical Society.

"It may have achieved national acclaim by all the liberals and so-called intellectuals.

But it has probably all put presidents rolling in their graves."

Let them roll.

(audience laughing) "If it is trying to prove that Blacks have been mistreated, I don't know that the Maryland Historical Society is the appropriate place.

And if the show is to draw people to the Maryland Historical Society, is this really the type of people you want?"

(laughs) Oh, boy.

(audience laughing) Well, I could continue.

But that was the best part of it.

So this project, it opened for the AAM, the American Association of Museums Conference.

And it was, you know, a shock and a hit and changed my life.

For the better.

Have to add that.

Okay.

You're killing me.

Oh, gosh.

I knew this was gonna happen.

I represent the United States in the Venice Biennale.

The 50th one.

And I called it "Speak Of Me As I am."

I really love Venice.

I've come to really love Venice.

I had been there before.

But I've spent more time there when I was doing this exhibition.

And one thing was really fascinating to me.

That there are Africans everywhere in the artwork and in the city.

This was a funeral area, funeral monument for a doge, the head of the country.

And obviously, these characters who were holding up the doge who was up at the top there, and he was, the grave was inside that stone somewhere.

So these...

Besides this, oh, I decided to reproduce them and put them in front of the American pavilion.

Stati Vniti D'America.

And, you know, because it was, had such a reference, you know, unexpected reference and...

There we go.

Come on.

Yeah, and so I began to do some research on Italian art.

And there's lots of African American, Africans, not African Americans, in Venice and in Italy in the early centuries.

This is a magi scene.

But it was quite interesting to find all these characters.

They, and, you know, they were not like fictitious faces.

They were actually people there that they used as models.

This is Vernace.

And at this, at the huge table in the academia painting, there are just many, many African people at these tables.

Yeah.

And this is by Carpaccio.

It's a dark slide.

But in the foreground, you have this very tall African gondolier.

And there's a second one back farther.

And in fact, there was this kind of a society of Black gondoliers in Venice at that time.

Yeah, there he is.

So this was quite, you know, a great thing for me to find and think about.

And that's how that project really, that was the foundation of the project that I was doing there.

Here is, you know, a Black man about to jump into... Where did he go?

Here he is.

About to jump into the canal to get the cross.

But this pontiff jumped in first to get it.

So they were a part of the city scenes.

And even Tiepolo had this boy in the scene.

And he grew older in the paintings.

My mother had a big coffee table book with the image of, with this particular painting by Tiepolo.

And she could tell me who the different people were in there.

When I asked her about what the name of the Black boy is, she didn't know.

So it took coming to Venice as an adult to find out his name was Ali.

He worked in the Tiepolo studio.

I made these, the pavilion, if you haven't been, has this big glass window.

And I decided to reproduce these characters in, as if it was like in San Marco.

All the fancy costumes or clothing by Gucci and Prada and all that in those windows.

For the pavilion, I put these characters from history.

Recreating them.

Oh, here he is again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

So... And this one is by, oh gosh, now I've forgotten who he, what do you think the painter's name is?

Montagna, I think.

And this character, I wanted to find out about the fabric of all these characters 'cause I wanted to reproduce him and think about it.

They had the, they knew exactly what the costumes were of the other characters.

And they said that, "Well, no.

That's a fantasy."

That's a fantasy costume.

That wasn't, that's not something that was actually in the paint, actually in life.

But in fact, I studied in West Africa.

And this is strip woven cloth that is still made today in West Africa.

So he was wearing his native cloth.

The waiter there in this painting of the... Yeah, there he is.

So I reproduced him here too.

And then I had a little extra fabric.

So I made Gucci and Prada and all these kind of bags, fake bags that you see, but it's all the fabric from the African man's costume.

And, you know, at that time, there were a lot of Africans in Venice.

I didn't see them this year.

And so I got, I talked to them a lot about their lives and what, you know, what it was like being in Venice.

And so I, one of them was my guard for these things.

And then you can sort of see the reflection in the window.

The line of people going into my pavilion.

But he was there if you wanted to talk to him about his relationship with all this stuff.

The project, I called "Speak Of Me As I am," which is a line from "Othello."

And I'm very much interested in "Othello."

And so this chandelier is like, "Speak Of Me As I am" is the name of it.

And when I wanted to make this, chandelier is huge, I went to the glass blowers in Murano.

And I said to one of these glass blowers, "Oh, I wanna make a very large chandelier.

Really large.

Huge."

He says, "No problem.

I can do anything."

"You know, really huge."

"No problem.

I made sculpture for Yoko Ono.

I can do anything."

Okay, all right.

And I said, "But I want it to be black."

"Black?"

"Artists."

(audience laughing) Anyway.

So this turned out to be the first Black chandelier ever in Murano.

And after, and because it was, the pavilion was popular, it made the Murano community, who were the glass blowers of the islands, they got a lot of attention that summer.

And I was very happy about that.

This is also is titled "Speak Of Me As I am."

And the inside, the interior, I changed the color of the, what it was, and made it more like the Basilica San Marco as best I could do.

Obviously, it's not San Marco.

And in all these fancy hotels, there are these statues, and, you know, with their normal head.

And after this was up, during the Biennale, in all the hotels, they have these figures of these boys, these sort of servant boys, carved there.

And, you know, not old.

They're new.

But while this was up, they all disappeared.

I don't know why.

I didn't tell them you had to take it away.

But they just felt a little guilty, I guess.

But I don't, but anyway, this was, this piece is called "The Wanderer."

And, you know, I was gonna make another one like that, but I just couldn't chop off his head.

This is...

But he had these pegs in his arms to hold up the pillow.

And I just had a little blood showing his, you know, sticking him out of his pain.

This is called "Faith's Fate."

Oh, this is called, oh, "Helping Hands."

And that's, you know, everything from this pavilion was, I made there.

I mean, I bought these figures.

And those are, the hands that the boy's holding up is Canova, made by Canova originally.

Okay, how do I make it... Why is it not going?

Oh, there it is.

And this is, they had all these canisters of a, this is canisters of extincteur.

They're fire extinguishers.

And so I had a bunch.

And so this guy here, if he wanted to, he could turn off the fire, or if he didn't, he wouldn't.

And this one, that was kind of thing was called "Snuff."

And this is called "Spark."

Because the opposite would happen.

Actually, these must be "The Extincteur."

It's been a while.

This was the 50th.

And there's been a few ones since then of the pavilion.

The pavilion has had many other people since then.

So I've forgotten some of my titles.

Excuse me.

This is called "Spark," I believe.

And it's kind of a Molotov cocktail in the center of these things.

These characters that you see them all over Venice for sale.

I don't know, for a moment when I did this project, these kind of things disappeared.

But I was interested in glass.

I'd been working in glass for a long, for a bit of time and created this piece called "Drip Drop Plop."

This is called...

I forget what it's called now.

I'll wake in the middle of the night and say that's what that thing is.

(audience laughing) But it's all glass.

This is called the ominous glut.

Oh, and I continued making chandeliers.

I worked with a really great guy and really great glass master.

And so we come up with some crazy things.

This one is just a gradation of colors.

It's called...

Ask me later.

No, it's another title from "Othello."

"To Die Upon a Kiss."

And I was trying for the soul.

I mean the body is sort of coming down and the soul perhaps is going up.

Coincidentally, actually, my father, who lived in Spain for, you know, when he retired, was dying.

And to me, all, you know, it also referenced the, you know, his, you know, his body sort of departing and his soul going up.

And I started making mirrors.

I also having titles from Shakespeare, from "Othello."

Let's see.

"Iago's Mirror," this one is called.

It's piles of mirror.

They're used to making very elaborate mirrors.

And now they started making black mirrors for me.

But they're just a stacked of mirrors.

Oh, and then the different sizes, different shapes.

And I like this drip form.

So I started making, I have a whole series of flags which only has the color black wherever it shows up in the flag.

And this one has the extra drips coming out of this particular flag.

I don't remember what country it is.

So I made several of those.

And this is called the met, the, or the "Mede of the Muse."

An Egyptian figure and a European one.

It's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art now.

I'm really thrilled.

I mean, it was an addition, but they have one now, which just really makes me happy.

Yeah.

Hmm.

I have these great glass blowers in America.

The American glass blowers are fantastic.

And they make the drips for me.

I did learn how to blow glass at Pilchuck where Dale Chihuly, you know, founded and was there when I was there.

One of his other cohorts and older glass blower said, when I first got there, he said, "Oh, the first one's free."

And I'm like, I'm never gonna make glass things.

And then I started making glass things.

And this is another mirror.

"I see Othello's visage in my mind, in his mind," which is a line that Desdemona spoke.

And these are ornaments, obviously.

But it is a mapping of the slave trades of the Atlantic and the Pacific and the makers and producers of oil.

It's called "The Unnatural Movement of Blackness."

On the wall there.

Oh, and this is the last thing I'm going to show you.

I just did a big commission for Port Authority if you're... Not Port Authority.

For LaGuardia Delta terminal.

And the biggest project that I ever did.

I made them in Germany.

And had them shipped.

We painted them and shipped them back.

And it's there.

And it's really kind of fun because they put a little plaque up with me, with their people.

And the staff, of course, see it and always come over and say hi.

But, yeah.

It's called "Mother" as in our Earth.

And it includes some of the black drip forms.

I would say that they're not glass because they wouldn't last long if there was an earthquake or what have you.

So they're, or bumped into each other.

So they're aluminum.

Oh, yeah.

More pictures.

And that's it.

Thank you very much.

(audience clapping) Thanks.

So I don't know if anybody has any questions.

But please come on up.

(audience chattering) - You were like exactly on time.

It's so great.

Okay, folks.

Yeah, come down and line up at the microphones and we will start this Q&A.

Wonderful, Fred.

- Oh, thanks.

- Yeah, if you want to start.

- Should I start?

- Yeah.

I mean these people will gaggle through and- - Okay.

- We've got folks at the ready.

- Yes.

- [Chrisstina] Go for it.

- [Fred] I hope this was okay.

- [Chrisstina] Folks, if you're leaving, please keep it down.

We have people that wanna ask questions here.

Go for it.

- [Fred] Okay.

Her mic is not on.

- [Chrisstina] No, it is.

It should be.

- [Fred] Oh.

- [Chrisstina] Her mic, your mic's on.

Just put your rod right up to it.

- [Sam] Hello.

- [Fred] Oh, yeah.

- Oh, hi.

My name's Sam.

Your art is really, really cool.

I was wondering who are some of the people that you met that like influenced you to travel to these places and to look at this different artwork and discover its histories.

- Wow, wow.

It was all very happenstance.

Just by accident.

I wanted to go to the Biennale.

So that was, you know, a great thing.

- Just make sure you put the audio up to your mouth, yeah.

- Okay, oh.

- You can go up, you can go to center now 'cause you've got your- - Well, I'm- - You're wireless now.

You're wireless.

- So, yeah.

I just... Just one reason or another, I wasn't go going for any specific places for specific things.

And I, but it's really a great way to kind of reinvigorate your ideas and, with different materials or seeing how other people use materials.

I'm, you know, I don't make much with my hands anymore as I did when I was in college and after college.

I really get everything from what I see in the world.

And, but manipulating that.

And so that's basically how my career has gone.

I'm very, very happy because a lot of travel in the world does really inspire you.

But then there's things that really, you can do something with.

And so Italy has been a very, a great font for that.

I go quite a bit to Venice and to Rome and... Yeah, that's kind of how it is.

- Thank you.

- Sure.

Oh.

- [Participant 1] Hi.

- Hi.

- Thank you for your talk.

- [Fred] Oh, thanks.

- My question is how do you consider the line between artist and curator and what has been your relationships with curators?

- You know, who planted this woman here?

(audience laughing) There's a whole lot of stuff I didn't tell you.

When I, besides being museum guard, when I first came back to New York from college, I worked at the Met.

I worked at the Museum of Natural History in the education departments.

And that was really, and just being back in New York after school, really kind of defining for me to think about museums because I was an artist, a person of color, and back then, you know, that was, you know, persona grata.

And there were these institutions that supposedly, you know, were representing the world and they were not.

I got to know Alisa LaGamma, who was the curator, the chief curator of the African and Oceanic Wings as I moved forward through this, through life.

But, and they of course changed drastically.

I'm in a show coming up at the Met, come on over in, in November called, it's called, I forget what it's called, but it's African Americans and Egypt.

And, yeah.

I'd say, I got really inspired.

And also really annoyed.

There was, sometimes your anger is quite helpful because when I first was working in these museums and being around these museums and seeing, you know, their blind spots, heavy duty blind spots, it made me have to do something.

I'm, you know, I'm not a violent person.

But I do, you know, make my ideas known.

But, you know, it's just the world is caught up with me.

Yeah, so it's, I don't know, that's kind of how it developed for me.

I mean, it was nice for me to find a location that I could really unpack.

The museum needed some heavy duty unpacking.

And so there's, I, we only had a little bit of time.

But I have so many other kinds of things that kind of, you name it, 'cause I was in West Africa for, in the seventies and then coming back to the States was a very, you know, just was mind blowing situation and really opened up my thinking about the world.

And so it's a great thing to travel.

But, and, you know, all your preconceived notions are challenged.

And so that's the great thing about travel, I guess.

- [Participant 1] Thank you.

- Oh, this... Hello.

- Hello.

I'm just curious.

Do you consider yourself kind, do you consider your art an act of protest or is that almost a byproduct of the history you're retelling through your curation and artwork?

- Yeah, I think, you know, it's really just within me.

It's my, it's who I am.

And so it's not, people do call me, you know, all sorts of things.

Activists and blah, blah, blah.

But it's not.

I'm just, I see something that's funny or odd and nobody else is like, well, you know, you don't see that's going on over there?

And I just do something.

Make something and put it out in the world and then other people can at least get into my mind a little bit if, even if they have a different perspective, yeah.

- [Participant 2] Awesome.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

And now over here.

- [Laura] Hi, I'm Laura Napier.

- Hi.

- I'm just saying hi.

- [Fred] Hi.

- And I just wanted to ask about censorship.

And it sounds like from your story about the Historical Society in Maryland that no one stopped you or like said you can't do that.

But I wonder if you've encountered that there or in the future, everybody knows what you do.

So they probably expect- - [Fred] Well, yeah.

- That you're pulling out these stories that people don't wanna look at.

But how do you manage that, and like, where does that go?

- Well, it's interesting.

You know, there's a whole lot in that.

A lot of the people at the Historical Society, they're really nice people.

But I, you know, they just sort of were in their little bubble.

And so, and the director, because he had no show, he had only been there a couple of years, just let it happen.

And it was, I should have mentioned if I didn't, that the Contemporary Museum held the hands of the, you know, the contemporary director held the hands of, his hand through this thing.

And the curator held the hand of the chief curator in the Historical Society.

He was fired in the end after this show.

And it wasn't because it was a bad show or that it was unliked.

The problem was it was too liked, you know.

It just, it meant that they had to change.

And so he was, you know, he was the one who had to pay for that.

I mean, the trustees were, well, from central casting.

And so...

But he's quite happy.

He wasn't mad at me or anything like that.

He went on to...

He was a wealthy, wealthy man.

And he went on to do, be the head of some other museum.

Like, I think it was a boating museum somewhere.

And, you know, but, you know.

But no, so it was quite fine.

And I don't always, I don't know what I'm, if I'm gonna find anything.

Actually I don't.

I have to be there for a museum.

I've done many, many museums.

And if I, if there's nothing there for me, I just can't make it work.

I'd like to, but I can't.

But I've really done it all over the place now.

So... Did I answer that question?

I, okay.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- I had a question.

So in a lot of the historical like, white American and European depictions of Black people, they're like, the way that they're painted and sculpted seems to be like, with the assumption that they're supposed to fade into the background.

And I was wondering how do you relate to those images?

Like do they feel like caricatures to you or do you try to empathize with those depictions?

- You know, I only have so much time to kind of empathize.

I could ignore.

I mean, if it's, are you talking about artists?

- [Participant 2] I'm more talking about like those- - Popular culture?

- Those figures as like people.

Like do you try to see those- - Like in Italy?

What I was talking about?

I'm trying to picture what you're seeing, what kind of things.

- Like, in say the paintings of like the Black slave boys behind the like white children.

- Oh, historic paintings?

- Yes, the way that they were painted was so that they would like fade into the background.

- Yeah.

- You know, with those, you tried to kind of like bring those figures as, you know, people more to light.

But I was wondering like, do you engage with those images more as caricatures of yourself or as like people who you can empathize with maybe.

- Well, I just think the artist needs some therapy, but.

(Fred and audience laughing) - [Participant 2] Yep, fair enough.

- And I'm not a therapist.

Actually, that's what people, some have called me.

'Cause when I go into a museum and I do my, to do what I do, I get to know a lot of all the staff.

Some of them, you know, don't want to mess with me.

And that's fine.

But the ones that I become friends with or just will talk to me and give me information, 'cause I don't, I want to, if I'm going to do a critique, it has to be correct and it has to be something that that particular city, that particular country will understand.

It's not, you know, if I go away happy 'cause it made sense to me and nobody else thinks this, you know, they're scratching their head or they're a mad, that's not what I'm looking for.

I am not there to make fun of or, you know, I'm just speaking through my voice and hopefully, and through my personality, and hopefully they understand that, you know, this is, it's hopefully a hopeful, a helpful critique.

And it's as much about me as it is about the place or, you know.

And so I have not had a project that I've done, and I've done them, you know, you know, you name it Australia to Sweden, to all sorts of places, and Egypt.

And, you know, we leave in a good place.

They, you know, we all know that, well, they may not do what I do.

But they respect me 'cause we, you know, we get along really well.

The only way my work works is if I get along with people because they open up.

And so it's always a wonderful thing.

And that's also at museum, in museums in the states too.

Yeah, I've been called a museum therapist because, you know, they can't, the staff members can't talk to each other and let out these, whatever they're feeling about the place.

So they talk to me.

And we have great conversations.

And, you know, it's, I leave.

So they're fine.

It's gone.

But no, it's always been, you know, I love museums and I really respect museum professionals.

Just want to, you know, make them think beyond their little fiefdom.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Sure.

Hey there.

- Hi, my name's Riddick.

I have a stutter.

That's why I might take a little bit on a few words with the question.

But I was interested in the spaces that you create between ascension and falling and maybe like what lives in those spaces with the drops or with the, or even with a boy who was mid jump/fall into the water.

Like what lives in these spaces in between like up and down with you.

- Spaces in between the works that... And now, I've kind of lost it.

That's how they respond to my work or how they act in the world or you're talking about my particular artworks that have spaces in between.

- Yeah, so with your work with the drops, for instance, right?

Like it's an act of falling.

- Yes.

- However, it's held in this position on the wall.

- Yes.

- Mid-fall.

- Yes.

- And with the, on the chandeliers as well.

You have the lighter values and the darker values and there's this in-between space between those two.

And I was wondering what occupies those spaces and if it ties to blackness or anything like that.

- Not specifically.

But what you made me think of is that the piece that had the light at the top and then went to the black, which to me was like coming down.

My father was dying.

- Yeah.

- And it became something about him.

That, you know, his body was the blackness in him and his body was sort of sinking.

And then, but I like to think that he was also, you know, letting go and becoming, you know, for the next chapter of his life.

And so, and that only came after I realized that there was, it was another reason for me making this piece.

'Cause it was particularly, you know, again named about Othello or Iago or whatever.

But there was also, you know, there are subtexts that you only see after you've made the piece or after a while you realize, oh, that's what it was really about, you know?

And so it becomes very cathartic too.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Yes.

- Hi, my name's Serena.

And I have a lot of family in New York.

So I see LaGuardia pretty frequently.

And I see "Mother" every single time I go to LaGuardia.

So when I saw you're gonna be speaker, I was very, very excited.

So my question was, how does one get a commission from LaGuardia?

What was that process like?

(audience laughing) - Practice.

No.

It's, yeah, I think the LaGuardia commissions, and now there's commissions at JFK.

I think, you know, the curator's, it's not any curator.

They're deciding who the group of people would be.

I mean there are many other kind of commissions.

But these sort of major ones, they're very picky, choosy, and want some bling and all that kind of stuff.

And they want people to like it.

'Cause you know, I don't, I wouldn't wanna be in that position.

What if they hated everything?

All the works that they chose, you know.

That's not gonna be pretty.

But anyway, you have to really want, you know, think strongly, think deeply.

And if you're on the other side of it, you're an artist, you can, there are lots of commissions out there.

And some you can apply for.

And that's a way to go because there's so many of them out there.

It's a job to sort of follow them.

I have an assistant who does some of that for me.

But I'm not, you know, it's, I don't feel beholden to commissions, because, again, you have to really feel something for that particular commission.

I mean less than, actually, I have to feel something about that sort of, that I can get out of it, that I feel it's taking me somewhere that, or fits very neatly into what I already do and I can see expanding that way.

But otherwise, you know, the curators hold the purse strings.

And, of course, that project, that last project, I went through like three or four iterations.

Didn't look like that when I first showed it to...

I just have to laugh.

You know, these folks who are the head of Delta, and, you know, not exactly, I don't know what museums they ever go to.

But not too many.

But they, you know, my initial idea was going, was really, the group that was in New York really was excited about it.

It was like a string of red, black, and green mirrors, chandeliers.

And that was this one idea I had.

And I had, and it was, I elaborated on it.

But, and everybody thought it was great.

I had my reason for doing it.

And, you know, and then it went to the next level at Delta.

And it got by there.

Then it got to the next level at Delta.

And they came to the meeting and they said, "Oh, those are the, red, black, green, those are the colors of our competitors."

(audience laughing) So when you can, you know, there are other things that become important.

And that you can't really talk yourself out of that.

So, but I'm, you know, in fact, oh, the other thing was, the other thing they said when I told them they were all glass and, you know, they said... Oh, hell.

I just forgot what they said.

Another funny thing.

I don't remember now.

But it was just, it's not what an artist would even think about, you know.

But they had their own reasons for wanting these things.

And so, yeah.

So you have to be prepared for that.

I was very happy to get the commission.

It's like my second, only second commission over the years.

- Thank you.

- Hello there.

- Hello.

- New York.

New York.

- I might be a little too short for this mic to be up this high, but yeah.

There we go.

- There you go.

- So, yeah.

Hi.

I really enjoyed your talk with us today.

Just, you know, as another Black artist, albeit one in college, trying to learn how to get around all this whole thing.

But I guess I just wanna ask just what was the most important thing for you?

And I guess this can apply even like beyond college and just like your life all the way up even to now.

Just like, what was the most important thing for you?

Just navigating through it all just as both a Black man and an artist, considering we live in a country that- - Yeah.

- And I would even say the arts sphere is not always, you know, best geared for our favor or better interest.

So just how did you learn to navigate all that?

- I'll tell you.

I'll tell you.

The art world you're coming into is light years away from what I came to.

When I came, I would go, you know, look, I thought I was looking okay.

Going to like openings and things.

And then I'd be standing there and someone would come over and they'd hand me a cuff.

(audience gasping) (Fred laughing) So that's what it was like in the 70s and particularly in the 80s.

So you just had to say, "Well, they got some problems."

And you just go on yourself, you know, and just, you know, make alignments with other artists, particularly other artists, and expand your, you know, expand your horizons with other people that you kind of have similar ideas or similar experiences or can really understand what it can be like.

But it's so different now.

It's kind almost hysterically different.

But, of course, I am in this other place.

So I probably have this, I don't probably see what other younger artists see because, you know, I am who I am.

But, yeah.

You just have to just keep on keeping on.

You know, you gotta keep doing it.

- [Participant 3] Yeah, thank you.

- Sure.

- Hi, Fred.

I have a question for you.

In your 1992 work, the mannequin's wearing museum guards- - Oh yes.

- Outfits.

- Yes.

- The mannequins are white, obviously.

I'm thinking about mannequins lately.

- Oh, they were all black.

- Are they all- - Yeah.

Yeah.

- Are they all black?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Well, I wonder why I saw them as white.

That was strange.

- Yeah, yeah.

No, they didn't have their heads.

So maybe you just- - Ah.

- Yeah.

- It was only- - Maybe- - It got up to the neck.

Maybe that's what it was.

So you, did you have to paint them yourself or were they provided to you as black?

- No, I painted them.

- You did?

- Yeah, 'cause they were just, yeah.

They don't mind having, you know... Yeah, yeah.

I painted them.

And because essentially, they don't come, and they didn't come in black, you know.

- No, they, yeah.

- So basically, and... - So was it the, I'm curious.

Is this the first time that happened?

I mean, for you.

You had to paint them and create them that way.

Whenever I find mannequins, they're white.

I'm working with an institution where all of the mannequins are white.

And I'm coming up against people saying, "Oh, we don't want to paint the mannequins."

And I'm having a hard time convincing them that we need to change the colors of the mannequins.

- Yes, it's a, yeah.

It's not a crime.

(participant laughing) I mean, sometimes, if you're painting a, you know, a white mannequin black, they may not, if it's has a face on it, they may not look, you know, it may look painted because, you know, it's not only the color.

You know, it's also the physiognomy.

- [Participant 3] Yeah.

- And so they may be right.

They may just need new mannequins.

- [Participant 3] Yep, good point.

Thank you.

- Sure.

Oh, sorry.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- So I really enjoyed the presentation.

And I noticed like, in all your works, it was very like meta.

Like related to the space that I was in with the Historical Society and with the piece in Italy.

Like it was, you know, the little caricatures that were in the hotels.

And so I'm wondering if like, your own personal relationship with wherever you're from, I'm not sure of your like personal history or anything.

But like if that informs your work or like relates in any way, like your own, where you're from, where your family's from, that sort of thing.

- Oh, yeah.

- If you think about that.

- If I think about it.

I don't necessarily think about it.

It's just in me.

But, you know, half my family, well, everybody's from Brooklyn or the Bronx.

But before that, St. Louis.

And on the other side of my family from the Caribbean, little island in the Caribbean, has the other family that emigrated, some of them emigrated to the States.

So, yeah.

So I have all this stuff going on inside me.

And I don't know where to go with that.

All right.

What was... - [Participant 4] It was kind of a vague question.

- Okay, okay.

It wasn't me.

(Fred laughing) - Well... - Was that okay?

- Sure, yeah.

- Okay.

(Fred and audience laughing) (audience clapping) Oh, boy.

(audience chattering)