Artist Talk with Fred Wilson

When: June 15th 2023, 20:00 - 22:00 CET

Where: Bazaal, Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam

The Research Center for Material Culture, the research institute of the Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam, is delighted to announce the public lecture of renowned international artist Fred Wilson at the Wereldmuseum on June 15, 2023. Focused on his longstanding work, the public lecture, followed by a conversation moderated by Wayne Modest, will explore the question of artistic interventions that challenge conventional modes of history writing and museological practices, including in ethnographic museums. Broader than the museum, we would like to address the question of artistic intervention in the public space, an issue that has dominated recent discussions in Rotterdam.

Please register here

About the Speaker

Through his interdisciplinary body of work, Fred Wilson has gained recognition for his highly conceptual and unique artistic practice. His famous intervention, Mining the Museum (1992), exemplifies how through his work, he aims at challenging notions of race history, culture, and conventions of display. Furthermore, Wilson wants to bring attention to how current ways of categorization, collecting, and displaying continue to perpetuate ideas of power relations inscribed into institutions. Although based in the U.S., Wilson has had over 40 solo exhibitions across the globe and has represented his home country at the Cairo Biennale in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003. He is additionally part of the board of trustees at the Whitney Museum and has received recognition through the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant (1999), the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2006), the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change fellowship (2018) and Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award (2019).

Photo by Guy Ben-Ari, Courtesy of Pace Gallery