Family and Friends

Throughout his career, Wilson undertook formal likenesses of historical and contemporary figures, such as his portraits of John Spencer Bassett or Ralph Ellison. These tended to be rather decorous works, as befitted their public purpose. Intermittently, however, Wilson also sculpted those close to him, commemorating his circle of family and friends in a more relaxed, informal idiom. Preserving their distinctive postures and expressions in bronze, he elevated the everyday realities of his life to the realm of art. These poignant characterizations provide a glimpse into a more private side of this artist.

Object Labels:

The Sculptor’s Daughter, 1965-66
bronze
Julie Wilson Shiver collection, Owings Mills, Md.

The Sculptor’s Son, ca. 1958-60 (?)
bronze
Patricia and Craig Wilson ’74, MA ’76 collection, Latham, N.Y.

Ten Years Later: Homage to Stanley Ferber, 1988
bronze
Binghamton University Art Museum, Binghamton, N.Y., gift of Gil and Deborah Williams 2023.17.16

Wilson met art historian Stanley H. Ferber (1927–1978) while studying at the University of Iowa and they soon became friends, teaching alongside each other at N.C.C. Ferber and his wife Phyllis were, like Wilson, deeply committed to the civil rights struggle, and Minority Man II was long in his collection. Ferber joined the Harpur faculty in 1963 and helped to recruit Wilson the following year. For the next decade-and-a-half, until Ferber’s untimely death, they were the closest of colleagues. In this deeply personal relief, gifted to Ferber’s son, Wilson memorialized his friend on the tenth anniversary of his death. The sculptor attends to Ferber’s supine body, gently cradling his head as he is consumed by fire, in a testament to their stoic masculine camaraderie.