Whether abstract or formally structured, art is difficult to contain. Heated arguments over what can be considered art continue today because a universal definition cannot be applied or accepted. The boundaries of art are infinite; it has even been said that art is never really finished, but rather abandoned. By embracing Fred Wilson's latest installation, the Hood Museum and the Dartmouth community have recognized the renewed potential of pieces of art as well as acknowledged aspects of our history long forgotten. On view since October 4, "So Much Trouble In The World -- Believe It or Not!" examines Dartmouth's history reflected through the Hood Museum's diverse collection of relics and artifacts.
Artist Fred Wilson's installation is a collection of unconventional objects taken from the Hood Museum's archives and present exhibits and arranged in a display that reflects Dartmouth's own history of collecting artifacts and examining cultural, technological and scientific connections. By rearranging the pieces of a museum's permanent collection into installations, Wilson points out obscure and often overlooked connections between objects, people, places and local and national histories.
"Each museum, not to mention region of the country and the world, has a very specific 'personality' and viewpoint," Wilson said this past summer in an interview with Barbara Thompson, curator of the African, Oceanic and Native American Collections at the Hood Museum. "The collection at the Hood uniquely represents an American history that reflects events at Dartmouth, but also the northeast in general."
Certain aspects of the installation, as well as its title, can be attributed to Robert Leroy Ripley, self-taught cartoonist and honorary Dartmouth alumnus. Thompson's essay, entitled "Making So Much Trouble in the World," explains that Ripley began his career at the New York Globe with a series of sketches titled "Champs or Chumps," featuring odd facts and athletic feats.
Soon after, he began a collection of oddities called "Ripley's Believe It -- Or Not!" As a collector of unusual objects, he displayed his collection at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 in a popular spectacle known as the "Odditorium."
Douglas Storer '21, Ripley's radio-program producer, facilitated the process of granting Ripley an honorary degree from Dartmouth in 1939. Ripley then contributed more than one hundred artifacts to Dartmouth's collection, many of which were displayed in the "Robert Ripley Room" of Wilson Hall from 1940 to 1961.
"In the other college museums that I have 'mined,' there was very little in the collection that got at the heart of the college and its history," Wilson said. "Because their histories are intertwined and the collections reflect that, my work at the Hood will undoubtedly contain aspects of Dartmouth history."
Another one of Dartmouth's famous alumni is recognized in the installation; at the beginning of the installation, there is a silk sock that once belonged to Daniel Webster -- a seemingly odd addition to the installation but an important piece in the artist's mind.
"You'd think an artwork would be the [unique] object and something that is not 'art' would probably not necessarily be unique when in fact many times, the inverse occurs in this collection," Wilson said.
As is the case with many of Wilson's installations, questions concerning attitudes of cultural and racial bias arise when examining the artifacts on display. In the installation, a series of busts line a wall and feature the likenesses of multiple ethnic groups, each labeled only with various captions including "I have a name," "I have a purpose" and "Someone knows me -- but not you."
Representations such as these clearly illustrate how ethnic groups have been marginalized, and hint at a level of inequality examined throughout the installation. Works by Jacques Callot, Goya and other artists feature scenes displaying human indifference, suffering, death and prejudice throughout history.
"Although no works in the exhibition directly represent or were made in the 21st century, their connection to current events is unmistakable," Thompson wrote in her essay.
"The collecting habits of the museum over the last century also create an image of what the museum -- and by extension its society -- believes should be important today," Wilson said.
A wide variety of techniques and focuses are featured throughout the installation. Casts of hands, including those of Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, circle the top of one table, emphasizing the detail and differences in each structure.
"His intentional arrangement of the prints in a much darker, moodier manner provokes, whether they are in the artistic renditions of the past or in the instantaneous news flashes of today's mass media," Thompson wrote. Certain prints, lithographs and photographs are concealed except for an area viewed through a small hole, as if to point out a small detail that is often overlooked or ignored.
"Because the collection is as varied as it is deep, I feel a freedom to create a complex image, one devoid of answers. However, I do hope it will open up a myriad of questions," Wilson said.
Fred Wilson is known for his site-specific installations throughout the United States. His 1992 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society, entitled "Mining the Museum," revealed concealed stories of cultural and racial attitudes that were previously undermined by other politics of the time. Other well-known installations include "Cabinet Making, 1820-1960," in which parlor chairs were arranged around a whipping post once used in a Maryland jail, and "Friendly Narratives," in which four skeletons were laid out in glass cases and vaguely labeled to reflect popular ethnographic representation or marginalized people and cultures. Most recently, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, where he created an exhibition that addresses the erasure of the presences of Africans and Moors from Venetian history and art history.
Wilson was also featured on a PBS-art special segment entitled "Structures" that aired on October 1 and 2.
The installation will be on view at the Hood Museum until December 11.
