About the project
"No artist in America has distilled the legacy of racial strife so ably and poignantly as Fred Wilson. The subtle gesture he has undertaken for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail will resonate not only as a symbol of a missing narrative in Midwestern cultural history, but also as a powerful evocation of the selfless courage of African-Americans in service to this country. 'E Pluribus Unum' promises to be among the most rewarding works of public art in the Midwest." --Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO, Indianapolis Museum of Art
When Wilson was approached by the Cultural Trail's curator, Mindy Taylor Ross, about a commission for the trail, he recalled that only one of Indianapolis' downtown monuments included a representation of a person of color: the iconic Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument that sits at the heart of the city. The figure on that monument -- an African-American man -- is forever frozen in time as a freed slave sitting half-clothed on the ground with his hands raised up with broken shackles. Prior to the Glick Peace Walk's dedication in June 2010 with a sculpture honoring Booker T. Washington, this figure was the only monumental representation of African-Americans visible to the hundreds of thousands of visitors and residents in downtown Indianapolis.
By definition monuments are "lasting evidence of someone or something notable or great" and are "memorial stones or buildings erected in remembrance of a person or event." But given Indianapolis' complex and troubled history regarding race relations, what does it mean if our public monuments are lasting evidence of racial inequality? And if there are no monuments to address that inequality, then how do we know that inequality doesn't continue to exist? Isn't it time to recognize the place of African-Americans in contemporary society? Few artists are better equipped to raise and grapple with these questions than Fred Wilson.
"One of the most urgent questions of our time is why racial animosity and inequality persist in a nation dedicated to the ideals of freedom and opportunity. Despite the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights movement, and affirmative action, the division between white and black seems as intractable as ever. To understand why, we must go beyond a history of politics and policy. We need a history of consciousness as well. We need to examine the inner life of culture as well as the external events that shape it...The story of the public monument in America is uniquely revealing because it bridges these inner and outer realms.." -- Kirk Savage, in the epilogue of his book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Face, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America, 1997.
One of the first questions Wilson's work posed for organizers of the Cultural Trail was, "How can the Cultural Trail profess to be a project about positioning Indianapolis in the 21st century if our downtown art collection lacks representation of African-Americans?" Our answer was, "We cannot." By enabling this commission, the Cultural Trail supports the expansion of a permanent art collection that speaks to diverse audiences and that enhances our city's creative environment with a project that is long overdue.
This project will open up vital dialogue on the local and national level about monuments and memorials, public spaces, representation, and power. It is significant for the City of Indianapolis that it will be the first city in the United States to have an artwork of this caliber by Fred Wilson -- an artwork that directly questions who is and who is not represented in the public realm and why.
Furthermore, the Cultural Trail project opens up new avenues for Wilson's artwork. This project will be a milestone in Wilson's career; -- it is his first project mining monuments and memorials and then creating a new, permanent artwork for the public realm. Wilson says. "By reclaiming the black figure on the monument I intend for the sculpture to be a catalyst for change and symbolically reclaim the African-American position from its unfortunate history." He is already ruminating about a new body of work that could follow this project's completion and continue his exploration of symbols found in public.
Wilson has titled his overall project E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One). He has digitally scanned the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument sculpture of the freed slave in 3-D. Wilson proposes to recreate him in Indiana limestone (like the original), and to present him in the City-County Building's prominent front plaza in an upright, empowered position as a 21st century person of color. Instead of clenching his fist around shackles, the figure will be holding a flag of Wilson's design representing the African diaspora. The base will be granite and will contain a seating element so as to mirror the overall site design of the City-County Building's civic plaza. Additionally, the granite base is being developed with the idea that annually the names of African-Americans who contributed to society and the notion of freedom could be etched into it to create a living public art installation with ongoing audience engagement.
Wilson is thinking also about whether the man depicted in the sculpture should be identified and given a name or should be left to represent the African-American community as a whole. To help in making this and other conceptual decisions, Wilson is working to get to know a broad cross-section of members of Indianapolis' African-American community, to understand their perspective on this new public art piece, and to appreciate what it may come to mean to them.
Scanning the figure on the Soldiers' & Sailors Monument
Read Fred Wilson's early description of his project concept here: 
FredWilsonEarlyDescription.pdf 75.07 KB
