John Wilson’s Legacy Lives On
A spring exhibition highlighted the artist and BU professor’s commitment to depicting Black lives
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
John Wilson’s Legacy Lives On
A spring exhibition highlighted the artist and BU professor’s commitment to depicting Black lives
Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson, the largest-ever exhibition of work by the late painter, sculptor, and Boston University professor of more than 20 years, was on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this spring, before traveling to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in September. The show comprises about 110 works, most pointing to Wilson’s artistic exploration of Black lives, which underscore an insistence that Black people be fully seen in all their humanity.
Wilson had a lasting impact on the Black communities of Roxbury and Mattapan, and generations of BU students. While at BU from 1964 to 1986, he primarily taught undergraduate foundation drawing, which remains an essential part of the curriculum.
Accompanying its run at the MFA were two projects by groups of CFA students. An exhibition at BU, Foundation Drawing: The Legacy of John Wilson, featured works by students in first-year drawing classes in response to Witnessing Humanity. The show also featured archival materials related to Wilson from BU’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.
SVA visual narrative students produced In Dialogue with Wilson: Comics Reflections on a Boston Visionary, a comic book companion handed out at the exhibition.
“The very act of being an artist who makes work that celebrates the lives of Black and brown people, no matter the context, is a political act,” says Joel Christian Gill (’04), associate professor and chair of MFA visual narrative. “Making this work and celebrating it, especially in the times that we are living in, is an important thing.”