For his series ‘Old Salem: A Family of Strangers’, Fred Wilson photographed 20 different handcrafted dolls and arranged the portraits to resemble a family tree. Re-contextualizing the antique dolls through their photographic presentation, Wilson gives new life and purpose to the collection of dolls.

Interested in the displays and interpretations of history through museum displays, Fred Wilson (b.1954) works with existing material and arranges them in new and non-traditional ways to convey his own viewpoints through the presentation. Exposing curatorial manipulations of truths and institutional cultural biases, Wilson made a name for himself with his groundbreaking Maryland Historical Society exhibition, ‘Mining the Museum’ (1992-93), which shed light on the history of slavery in America by re-arranging the museum’s existing collection. Wilson earned his BFA in 1976 from the State University of New York, Purchase, NY. He has earned numerous accolades for his work, including the 1999 MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, the 2003 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, and in 1992 he was chosen to represent the United States in the Cairo and Venice Biennales. Recently, his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2012); The Pace Gallery, New York, NY (2012); Karsten Schubert, London, UK (2011); and JGM Galerie, Paris, France (2010).

Selected Public Collections:

The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY)
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY)
The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA)
Tate (London, England)