Renowned artist Fred Wilson (b. 1954) explores how models of collecting and display shape our understanding of identity, memory, and power. This exhibition examines the intertwined histories of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World’s Fair) held in St. Louis and Wilson’s own familial history, which spans several generations in the city during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Wilson’s engagement with the World’s Fair dates to a 2008 bronze bust he created of Ota Benga—an Mbuti man who was captured from the Congo and exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and later the Bronx Zoo. Wilson cast the sculpture from a plaster bust produced by The American Museum of Natural History, which commissioned life masks of Benga and dozens of people from around the world who were displayed at the 1904 World’s Fair. At the Pulitzer, Wilson extends this exploration of Benga’s legacy, drawing connections across observation, perception, self-fashioning, and nationhood.
The exhibition brings together sculptures, paintings, and works on paper produced by Wilson over the past three decades. Alongside his own work, Wilson presents historic artworks from local collections related to the 1904 World’s Fair and its legacy, as well as personal objects belonging to his paternal grandmother, Irma Dixon, who was born and raised less than a mile from the Pulitzer.
Through these juxtapositions, Wilson’s iconic flag paintings, Murano glass chandeliers, and mirrors enter into dialogue with historic objects, interrogating the construction of national and racial identity while inviting reflection on the African diaspora in a global context.
