Fred Wilson Reflections

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is pleased to announce Fred Wilson: Reflections, a major exhibition showcasing several bodies of work by acclaimed artist Fred Wilson, spanning two decades of his career from 2003 to the present. Curated by Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum and Professor of Fine Arts and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, the exhibition will be on view from August 20, 2025, through January 4, 2026, in the museum’s expansive Lois Foster Wing. Fred Wilson: Reflections is the artist’s first major museum survey in over a decade and includes the debut of the artist’s new immersive installation, Black Now!

Fred Wilson has gained widespread recognition for his groundbreaking artistic practice, which challenges dominant assumptions about history and culture. Working across a range of media—including sculpture, installation, painting, and glass—Wilson is best known for his conceptual interventions that expose the ways museums, archives, and institutions shape our understanding of the past. By reframing cultural narratives and recontextualizing objects, often drawn from historical collections or everyday life, Wilson shifts perspectives to reveal structural inequalities and the often-overlooked contributions of marginalized communities. His work invites viewers to question what is presented as fact to examine whose stories are told and whose are omitted. With Reflections, Wilson continues this powerful inquiry, unpacking, deconstructing, and reimagining cultural forms and social structures in ways that are as visually arresting as they are intellectually provocative.

The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first section of Reflections revisits Fred Wilson’s groundbreaking work in glass, a practice he refined for the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, where his presentation at the American Pavilion used the refined traditions of Murano glassmaking to probe themes of race, history, and cultural identity. At times evoking Shakespearian drama, Wilson’s black-and-white glass chandeliers, mirrors, and drops shimmer with unsettling beauty, evoking the repressed and traumatic histories of the African diaspora. These hauntingly elegant works are accompanied by a monumental mural-like installation of black-and-white paintings in the museum’s Lois Foster Stairwell, inspired by the flags of African and diasporic African nations. Stripped of vibrant colors except for black, Wilson’s Flag paintings offer a poignant meditation on the fractured identities, losses, and lingering wounds inflicted by colonization and its aftermath.

Complementing the ethereal poetics and political resonance of his glassworks and Flag paintings, the exhibition debuts Black Now!, an ambitious conceptual installation composed of more than 2,500 found objects that Wilson has meticulously collected since 2005. Occupying approximately one-third of the 4,400-square-foot Lois Foster Wing, this experimental intervention presents a dense and compelling array of books, t-shirts, posters, DVDs, perfume bottles, knick-knacks, and other quotidian ephemera—all linked by their connection to the color black or themes of Blackness. Black Now! prompts viewers to consider "black" not simply as a color but as a complex cultural and ideological lens through which we can interrogate shifting societal attitudes toward race, identity, and representation and uncover the subliminal messages encoded within material culture.

“My work asks people to look closely at what they think they know and reconsider the stories we tell about our history, culture, and ourselves,” said Fred Wilson. “How do seemingly banal and benign objects—books, trinkets, clothing—carry the weight of that history, oppression, and identity? Black Now! suggests reconsidering the material culture surrounding us and uncovering the deeper truths it reveals.”

Dr. Gannit Ankori added, “University art museums like the Rose Art Museum are uniquely positioned to foster critical dialogue, providing a space where culture, history, and creative expression intersect to shape not only our understanding of the present but also our ability to imagine potential futures. Fred Wilson: Reflections is a powerful exploration of the artist’s impact on art history and cultural discourse.”

Like Wilson’s black glass mirrors—absorbing, reflecting, obfuscating—Fred Wilson: Reflections compels us to confront what has been redacted from our collective memory, shifting our perspectives on our perceptions of subjectivity, heritage, and the unseen forces that shape history.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Fred Wilson (b. 1954, Bronx, NY) lives and works in New York City. He received his B.F.A from Purchase College, State University of New York. Since his groundbreaking and historically significant exhibition Mining the Museum (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society, Wilson has been the subject of many solo exhibitions at museums such Center for Art and Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD (2002); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2012); Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2005); Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, NY (2013); Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH (2016); Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Purchase, NY (2017). The artist has represented the United States at the Cairo Biennale (1992) and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). His work is in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Wilson’s accolades include the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” grant (1999); the Luce Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Object, Exhibition, and Knowledge at Skidmore College (2003-06); the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2006); honorary doctorates from Northwestern University (2007), Skidmore College (2008), and the Maine College of Art (2008); the Alain Locke Award from the Friends of African and African American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts (2013); and a Lifetime Achievement Award, Howard University, Washington, DC (2017). He serves on the boards of Save Venice, Inc., and Studio in a School, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.