Fred Wilson on His New Work for the Folger

Fred Wilson’s artistic output includes painting, sculpture, photography, and collage, among other media. But his 1992 work Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society used the museum’s own collection as its material, radically reframing how American institutions present their art. Wilson went on to represent the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale. For that exhibition, Wilson commissioned a black glass chandelier from the famed Venice glassmakers on the island of Murano. Wilson titled the piece Speak of me as I am, after the line from Othello.

In the years since then, Wilson has made several other pieces that engage with Othello, many of them made from the same evocative black Murano glass. In a new installation piece commissioned by the Folger, Wilson brings together two sides of his artistic practice: institutional critique and glass sculpture. It’s titled God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend—another line from Othello, this one spoken by Desdemona. The installation includes a massive black-glass mirror, ornately etched and filigreed. Visitors see themselves reflected in the mirror, along with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth that hangs opposite the mirror in the gallery. On another wall hangs an engraving of the actor Ira Aldridge in the role of Othello, alongside lines from the play written out in Aldridge’s own hand. The piece brings together questions of identity, belonging, erasure, and representation—and lets those facets reflect and refract one another, without easy answers. On this episode, Wilson discusses the piece with host Barbara Bogaev.

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Fred Wilson’s installation, God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend, will welcome visitors to the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall when the Folger reopens on June 21.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 4, 2024. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

MICHAEL WITMORE: On today’s episode: do you see yourself in Shakespeare? A new installation by artist Fred Wilson proposes a fresh way to answer that question.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger Director.

Fred Wilson’s artistic output includes painting, sculpture, photography, and collage, among other media. But his 1992 work, Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society, used the museum’s own collection as its material and radically reframed how American institutions present their art.

Wilson went on to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2003. For that exhibition, Wilson commissioned a black glass chandelier from the famed Venice glassmakers on the island of Murano. Wilson titled the piece Speak of me as I am, after the line from Othello.

In the years since then, Wilson has made several other pieces that engage with Othello, many of them made from the same evocative black Murano glass.

In a new installation piece commissioned by the Folger, Wilson brings together two sides of his artistic practice: institutional critique and glass sculpture. It’s titled God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend—another line from Othello, this one spoken by Desdemona.

The installation includes a massive black-glass mirror, ornately etched and filigreed. Visitors see themselves reflected in the mirror along with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth that hangs opposite the mirror in the gallery. On another wall hangs an engraving of the actor Ira Aldridge in the role of Othello, alongside lines from the play written out in Aldridge’s own hand.

The piece brings together questions of identity, belonging, erasure, and representation—and lets those facets reflect and refract one another, without easy answers. Wilson’s installation will welcome visitors to the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall when the Folger reopens later this month.

Here’s Fred Wilson, interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

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BARBARA BOGAEV: How do you approach an assignment like this? I mean, do you do a lot of research first? Or do you go in with a blank slate and see what pops out at you?

FRED WILSON: You know, it varies. It’s… you know, different situations. We get different kinds of work. But in this case they were very keen on having me come and meet with him, with Mike.

BOGAEV: Mike Witmore, the [Folger’s] director.

WILSON: Yeah, yes, so I came in with kind of a blank slate. I mean, I work with glass and other materials, but they were particularly interested in the mirrors. That was kind of the first step of it.

I don’t know if I suggested doing something about Othello or he knew that I was interested in Othello. Not everything I do is about Othello, so this was a perfect opportunity to really delve into it, especially with their archives.

BOGAEV: I know that the Folger was interested in the black mirror, that the mirror was something that they suggested, so that was kind of there from the start.

WILSON: Yes.

BOGAEV: Because I was reading that you’ve said that the first thing you do with every project is ask, “Where am I in this story?”

I wondered whether the mirror was functioning in that way for the visitors to the Folger, because you walk in there and then you’re immediately faced with this reflection. As if you’re—I don’t know—challenging visitors to place themselves in Shakespeare in every possible way. In the sense of a colonial history; in the sense of the text in the installation, as well.

WILSON: For me, it was really exciting because they have this incredible archive and I didn’t know that they had Ira Aldridge, his writing and these great images of him.

This project was not hard. It wasn’t a puzzle as some things start out as, because it was just, you know, it was a great marriage of the Folger and I. So, it was just a wonderful unfolding of ideas and images and ways of thinking about the subject.

BOGAEV: I want to talk about Ira Aldridge in a moment and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. But getting—thinking about this mirror, you gave the mirror a title which is a quote from Othello, “God me such uses send, not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.” It’s from the ending to a conversation between Desdemona and her handmaiden, Emilia.

Emilia has a much more, kind of, supple and pragmatic take on morality. So why that quote and what does it say to you?

WILSON: I was really interested in that it was spoken by Desdemona. The only other female in the—not the story, but in the cast of my project that is not visible. So, thinking about her personality, but also the queen and how, reflecting that line on the queen, who, as I got deeply and more deeply into it, perhaps this might’ve been something she would have thought of, considering—

BOGAEV: You mean in terms of what a difficult young life she had had and so tumultuous?

WILSON: Right. That was my initial feeling, thinking about it was. You know, because her father was such a difficult person. But then as I got more deeply into it, she herself was equally complex.

So, I thought this subject, while it was very clear in the play that how Desdemona was thinking about this. I thought also, well, it’s kind of also might cover some aspects of how the queen might’ve looked at her own situation.

BOGAEV: I’m getting a window into your process in that you’re thinking of this installation of these three elements in dialogue with each other.

WILSON: Yes. And revealing bits of aspects of these—the individuals behind them. I do feel like the mirror is Shakespeare himself and all of his glory and his intelligence and complexity. And, in some way, perhaps, you know, reflecting his world, and those relationships between herself and Shakespeare must have been quite fascinating.

So, since we don’t have, you know, a podcast of her and Shakespeare speaking, we are allowed to kind of just go deeply into it and kind of imagine what their relationship was like, how it would develop, and how they react to each other. It’s actually not known whether they actually met ever, but she did like his work, for the most part.

So, this title, to me, references the painting in a certain way, in that the painting is of Queen Elizabeth, and she has various objects in the painting: a sieve, and then various other things that relate to her reign.

BOGAEV: A globe.

WILSON: One of which—the globe. The globe, specifically, because of her seeming desire to expand the empire, which of course she did. So, she was quite herself a complex person. Not a meek person, let’s put it that way. And very smart. You know, she was really…

BOGAEV: I like that understatement. She was not a shrinking violet.

WILSON: No. No no no.

BOGAEV:  Then, we have Ira Aldridge. Tell us about the engraving and the dedication that you’ve included.

WILSON: I was just thrilled that the image that they had, the image—the great thing about being in the Folger. You sort of… there’s so much there. I just, of course, I related to him and was thrilled that to know that he was an actor in the US.

BOGAEV: In the 19th century.

WILSON: In the 19th century. He was born in 1807, and then deciding, “Nope, this is—this place is just backwards. Let’s all get out, you know, Manhattan,” and the racism of the United States. He just wanted to just get away from it. And he did.

He went to England and was the first African playing the part of Othello. And of course, this is long after the Queen and Shakespeare were gone, but he put his spin on it and the reality of it.

He was a very… seemed to be a really accomplished actor and completely took Europe by storm. So, that was a very inspiring quality that was also gave another weight and another perspective in this grouping of individuals and images.

BOGAEV: Well, it’s so wonderful to have that juxtaposition of Ira Aldridge with Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare because his story is so often relegated to this deep vault of history and many people don’t know it.

WILSON: Yeah, and you know, from an American perspective, or African American perspective, in the mix was just too good.

Also, even though he’s not speaking about any of that, he is kind of the eyes through which I find comfortable looking at Europe at that time. Because it wasn’t until, you know, Paul Robeson, more than a hundred years later that there was another African playing Othello.

BOGAEV: It’s also wonderful to see Ira Aldridge’s signature.

WILSON: Yes.

BOGAEV: This is a real human being here.

WILSON: Really, a real human being and someone with substance. Which is, you know, I mean, it was just, I was a kid in a candy store with all this. Because, I don’t have to make it up, you know?

BOGAEV: Right. Then, you get this portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, from 1579.

WILSON: Oh yes. Yes.

BOGAEV: It’s one of the most significant paintings of the Folgers collection. What was it like when you walked—when you saw it first? What struck you?

WILSON: Just well, her presence was certainly strong. The painter captured her not as, I would imagine, the usual perceived woman in that time, of in that particular time period. She was very, not only regal, but very, very much in control. The way she looks out at the audience, or at the people looking at her. She is very much in control. I really enjoyed that.

There’s no… when a painting actually speaks to you in that way it’s capturing something of the sitter that, you know, that you could only imagine. And this person actually did—the painter actually, you know, did this with her acknowledging and want—having the objects in the painting that she wanted to project. You don’t get a warm or fuzzy feeling from her.

BOGAEV: No, hardly. I mean, her posture is so erect.

WILSON: Yeah, yes.

BOGAEV: Her face is… she has all that lead that white lead face paint on, so her face is so white.

WILSON: Yes.

BOGAEV: It really drives home the whole, with the map and the globe. And the map includes Africa and the Atlantic and South America. And there’s a Latin phrase for, that means, “Much is lacking.” You know, she has this huge appetite for expansion. You really… it really drives home that just colonialism aspect of her, and I suppose of Shakespeare.

WILSON: Yeah, I guess so. Or, at least his—from the outside—his view of that. I was so thrilled when the space that I was given to do this was, you know, basically the first thing you could walk into. But, also, that my mirror reflects her. This was the main thing that I was trying to create, was that you see her in the mirror almost immediately. She’s—you know, you have to completely turn around when you want to, in the space, to see the painting. But she was there, overseeing the whole situation.

But, also what I tried to do is have each one of these objects relate to one another in some kind of way.

BOGAEV: Yeah, you’ve… it’s a black glass mirror and you’ve designed a number of these black glass sculptures referencing Othello. I understand the series started when you represented the US at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. What inspired you first when you were working on that? Was it the history of Africans in Venice or a love of—?

WILSON: Oh well, it was knowing Venice and going to the [Gallerie Accademia, Venezia] and, well, you know, I do this—I’ve been doing this sort of thing in the United States as well, looking at major—looking at collections, seeing where the African appears.

I’ve done this at the Met, but not as a project, just for my own interest to see what was hanging on the walls and how many, and how Africans were appeared in American art and the world’s art, and how the Met kind of, you know, felt about that.

The first time I did this, I had a group of students and they would walk around the Met and I’d say, “Let’s see how many Black folks you can find in the artwork.” I asked the curators first, you know, before, and they said, “Well, we only… it’s only about four or five.”

But so I had my students go out and they found many, many, many, many images, objects on view. Not even just in storage. I mean, it was just completely on view, but just invisible to the curators and everyone else at the museum. So I—and I’ve done this in other, other places over the years. So that was quite interesting.

And, going to the Accademia in Venice, you have Veronese, which with so many African people in this huge painting pretty much as you walk into the museum. Then, from there it goes on to, you know, all the famous Italian artists. Many of them had many images of Africans in them. The Black Gondoliers in the Carpaccio, and there was a society of Black gondoliers in Venice. But all that history, you know, people think of Venice as, you know, people from everywhere coming to Venice, but they don’t think about Africans coming to Venice and making a home there.

BOGAEV: And you went there and you were—you enlisted the glassblowers in Venice to work on these works, the chandeliers for that installation.

WILSON: Yes, the first black chandelier in Venice.

BOGAEV: So, they’re making these black glass chandeliers. And black is not a color of Venetian glass.

WILSON: No.

BOGAEV: What did they think of them?

WILSON: Oh, it was so funny. The first person I worked with for the Biennale, he was a glass person. Yeah, he said—I told him, “I want a big glass chandelier.” He says, “Oh, no problem. You know, I can make anything.”

BOGAEV: Right, a dime a dozen.

WILSON: “It has to be really big.” He says, “No problem, no problem.”

I said, “Well, I want it to be black.” He said, “Black! Ugh, artists.”

But he said, “Oh, I can do that. I can do anything. Don’t worry.”

BOGAEV: “You pesky artists.”

WILSON: Yeah. He says, “I work with Yoko Ono, everybody. I can do anything.”

Anyway, so hence the first black chandelier appeared. This huge chandelier appeared. Of course, that, again, in the Biennale, that represented Othello. It was called Speak of Me as I Am, and it’s the first thing you see when you walk into the pavilion. So, that was the first, and many more came after that.

BOGAEV: I was thinking about black chandeliers and just what it… how it reverberates with the story of Othello. How it resonates. Because black absorbs the light of everything around it.

WILSON: Yes.

BOGAEV: It’s interesting that you’re looking at this chandelier, this structure—you’re looking at the chandelier rather than the light that it reflects, which is usually what chandeliers do.

It almost… it seemed to me like a play on all these metaphors of seeming and being and Blackness and lightness in the play. I guess also how Othello makes himself—or makes you see all of the biases and the motivations of the Venetians around him throughout the play.

WILSON: Yes. Yes, that was the kind of interesting thing about the black glass, the metaphor of black glass. Because you’re really, in the usual chandelier, it’s reflecting light, and it’s supposed to kind of glow. Or it’s supposed to give light to the environment.

But a black chandelier makes you look at it and its structure, and the things that you don’t normally look at. And so, it’s sort of a metaphor for Africans in general, at least from that, from various periods of time.

BOGAEV: In the installation, you have a black mirror. Could you just explain what that is? Because maybe people don’t quite understand what you mean by that.

WILSON: Right. By a black mirror, yeah. I used traditional designs, recombined them and changed them, but still they seem to be traditional. But one would imagine that if you have a black [mirror], you just don’t see anything, you know. But, in fact, it does reflect specific things. And it gives you a very different view of the world around you.

It reflects things that are seemingly not important, because it’s showing you not just yourself, which of course becomes the most important thing in a mirror when you’re standing there. It reflects everything in the room, but in its own way. It makes you see the rest of the space in a different way that you may not have noticed because it’s not necessarily what you’re looking in a mirror for.

BOGAEV: Do you remember when Othello first resonated for you?

WILSON: Well in an artistic way, I think it was earlier than my professional self. I don’t know that I made the actual image of Othello in a work in college, or what have you, but I do remember feeling like this relates to this great man who had huge flaws, and or had a flaw that was manipulated. But I didn’t have the grasp of how to blend my thoughts and experiences with this character from the way-deep past.

It took quite a while before I decided that language and other people’s voices could resonate within a work of mine—could, you know, amplify my thoughts and others could perhaps enter into my thoughts, because of the use of another person’s language from a different period, and to make all these different—my thoughts make sense for me as well as for the play itself, or at least be obvious of where it came from.

BOGAEV: Oh, I see. So Othello as a kind of surrogate. I was wondering if you identified with Othello as being the only one.

WILSON: You know, it’s funny that you should say that. I was thinking to tell you that. I was—my elementary school, I was the only Black child in the entire school, in the entire neighborhood. And, so, I think later in life—

BOGAEV: Wow.

WILSON: Yeah, that’s a whole other story.

BOGAEV: That’s a lot. I mean…

WILSON: In the suburbs of New York. Oh brother.

Anyway, but we moved back to the city because my mother wanted me to go to music and art high school. She was very… I was the artist of the—that’s the only thing that saved me in that… I mean, not that anybody was mean or anything, but it just really… I was just different.

In elementary school, I was the artist—better than anybody in the school. Yeah, so I enjoyed you know, this long history of just trying to understand myself within the context of the world.

The only situation that happened to me that was kind of funny—and as I said, I didn’t have a hard time in school, I just had no friends. But, I was walking on the way to school one day, and this somewhat older student came over to me, and thought he was being funny, and he said, “Is your father Sonny Liston?” Who was a famous, you know, famous boxer at the time.

BOGAEV: Oh, yeah, that’s an obvious thing to ask.

WILSON: Yes, and as he towered over me, he was kind of smirking. And I said, “Yes.” And of course, then he, like, his face changed and he backed off. I’m very proud of that, having done that in that moment.

BOGAEV: Well, you went to art college too.

WILSON: Yea.

BOGAEV: I read that when you were graduating, one of your professors said, “So, do you want to belong to the white art world or the Black art world?”

WILSON: Oh, yes, that was the… yes. That was the chair.

BOGAEV: What did he even mean by that?

WILSON: Exactly. Because, you know, as a student, no one even mentioned that there were two. Or, you know, it was such a preposterous thing to say to me at that time.

I think he was, you know, telling me, “Well, there are two different roads you could take. You could take the road where you know, you could be totally unknown, unheard of, see no one except your community; or, you could attempt to be a part of the larger art world,” which, at that time, was a joke.

BOGAEV: Because they wouldn’t let you in the white art world?

WILSON: Yeah, I mean, it was just… yeah. I mean, I’d go to openings, when I did finally graduate and move to Manhattan, and I’d go to openings because I was involved with the Met teaching, and other museums. They’d have an opening, or an artist’s opening, and I’d go and people would hand me their cups, because why else would I be there?

And, you know, other experiences, of trying to get a job in a gallery, which, over the phone and with my resume, it was fine, and when I walked in not a half an hour later, the dealer said, “Oh, we filled that job.”

BOGAEV: In the last 20 minutes.

WILSON: Yes, exactly. This was the mid-‘70s.

BOGAEV: So, you were a museum educator very early on.

WILSON: I was, yes.

BOGAEV: Is that how all of this started? Because you’ve done so many pieces of that involve museums. You’re referred to as a museum-ist artist, and the museum is your medium.

WILSON: Yes, well, yes. When I was—when I first came to New York, I had various jobs. One was kind of teaching at the Met, teaching kids, and also the Museum of Natural History. You know, both experiences were very reflective of how the society was thinking about African people and African Americans.

BOGAEV: Well, I don’t want to let you go without kind of taking a step back and getting a big picture of this installation and the Folger. Because the history of museums, and you’ve spoken about this, just historically museums were one of the few places the Black Americans could get work in the art world. You had that experience too.

But historically, Shakespeare and museums are a story of, in a way, exclusivity. I mean, inclusive in that anyone can walk through the door, at least in the modern period. But also exclusive, because not everyone really feels a part of the history or welcome in the museum or historically hasn’t felt welcome.

Clearly your installation is referencing colonialism and English exceptionalism with Queen Elizabeth and the portrait. Were you consciously asking yourself how your installation would disrupt or call attention or play off of all of this history to point to a more inclusive future for museums?

WILSON: I guess at this point in my career, I don’t think about it anymore. It just flows out of me and I let it flow. So, that’s the question that, if anything, comes up for the visitor, the viewer, and they care to not just have a cursory view, stop and think about it, and what the relationship between the mirror, the painting, the lithograph, and the title and what Ira is saying—try to make sense of why all these things are in the same space and what’s going on between all these different things. What kind of exhibition is this? Is this more than just a thing on the wall and you just sort of study it and move on to the next thing?

You know, in the best museum installations that I’ve seen, that becomes not about race or anything. It’s about other issues that the curator perhaps is aware of, not aware of—That things in the room have a relationship beyond just the name of the maker, nut also makes the viewer think beyond what is the surface ideas about the particular painting or the particular sculpture or the room of artworks.

What is it asking you as a viewer to think about? What the art is asking and what the curator putting together an exhibition is trying to make you think about, or have you think about beyond just looking at pretty pictures.

Of course, what I do—what I started doing, because I was so frustrated in a certain way. It just… it seemed so obvious to me that museums were exclusive, even when they thought they weren’t. That creating an exhibition, as I did early on, called Mining the Museum, I wanted people to definitely see what I was seeing or understanding museums the way I was seeing them, and sort of view the things that were in storage or view the things that were on view and think about them beyond what the museum had decided they were about for you.

Which is important, but also, if there’s something vastly missing in how they think about it, and how you think about it, if you just start thinking independently and thinking and looking. That, to me, is a successful project. If you leave the museum thinking more and more about what you saw, and why, and how it was created, and why it was created, and what the relationships were.

BOGAEV: Looking at the art world in general, how much change have you seen in terms of how Black American artists are perceived and can build a career?

WILSON: Well, it’s, you know, it’s radically changed. I guess that’s what helps about being around a long time if you’re a part of trying to make change. It’s been very satisfying to see how people are relating to artists of all stripes and kind of seeing connections and understanding.

That there’s lots of work that has never been seen, and putting it out there and trying to find the best of the best in, you know, all communities. And, trying to not only just put it out there as something that’s happening, but also delve into the meanings and the reasons and the ideas of the artists of our time and the artists from the past, especially, too.

BOGAEV: You sound so optimistic. You’re not feeling like the, you know, the tokenism is still there? The one artist or the, “You’re only allowed one of each kind.”

WILSON: I don’t… you know, since I’ve worked in museums as a trustee or as a guard or, you know, all the different situations, running a gallery, I think they’ve come a long way from where I started.

So many of these institutions, you know, now that they’ve, sort of, the blinders have been taken off, they can’t put them back on. So, they’re trying. I’ve seen great growth. I’m a very positive person. I’ve seen great growth in that area. There are people of color, artists of color, but also curators in different museums are from different backgrounds, bringing to light and into the conversation other artists and other professionals in the field. So that, you’re not just the native informant anymore within the museum if you’re the one.

You’re within your… you know, the museum community has grown and people at least know that they don’t know everything and that there’s more to be known. And the conversations can be important and genuine.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been around so long that the change is very obvious to me. And the conversations are deep and rich.

BOGAEV: Well, thank you. You’re making me feel optimistic. Thank you for the installation and for the conversation. It’s all been really, really great.

WILSON: Thank you. It was really great.
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WITMORE: That was Fred Wilson in conversation with Barbara Bogaev.

Wilson’s piece God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend will be on view at the Folger Shakespeare Library starting June 21, 2024. That’s when our building in Washington, DC, will fully reopen to the public, after four years of construction. We can’t wait to see you here.

This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer, with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Digital Island Studios in New York and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare Unlimited, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice, to help others find the show.

Shakespeare Unlimited comes to you from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger is dedicated to advancing knowledge and the arts. You can find more about the Folger at our website, folger.edu.

Thanks for listening. For the Folger Shakespeare Library, I’m Folger Director Michael Witmore.