Welcome to the Wadsworth: A Museum Tour, 1991
Andrea Fraser staged this performance in April 1991 at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, one of the oldest museums in the United States. Taking the form of a guided tour, Welcome to Wadsworth, instead of escorting visitors through the museum, takes them on a tour of the outside of the building. In this way, the artist/lecturer draws attention to and exposes the relationship of the museum to the colonial past of Hartford and the historical legacy that influences the city’s present.
How should the museum institution represent the culture of the pre-industrial community while functioning in an urban context fractured by both ethnic and economic divisions? Starting her visit as an ‘outsider’, the artist gradually develops her identification with the ‘first families’ of Hartford, who founded the city and continue to support the museum, articulating the values and dreams that have turned Connecticut into one of the most segregated states, at an economic and racial level, in the United States.
Technical details
- Original title:
- Welcome to the Wadsworth: A Museum Tour
- Registration number:
- 5624
- Artist:
- Fraser, Andrea
- Date created:
- 1991
- Date acquired:
- 2017
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
- Object type:
- Audiovisual recording
- Media:
- Single-channel video, colour, sound, 26 min 12 s
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
- Copyright:
- © Andrea Fraser
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
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