ROBERT WILSON

credit photo: Alessandro Crinari

Of Wilson’s artistic career, Susan Sontag has added “it has the signature of a major artistic
creation. I can’t think of any body of work as large or as influential.” A native of Waco,
Texas, Wilson was educated at the University of Texas and arrived in New York in 1963 to
attend Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. Soon thereafter Wilson set to work with his Byrd Hoffman
School of Byrds and together with his company developed his first signature works
including King of Spain (1969), Deafman Glance (1970), The Life and Times of Joseph
Stalin (1973), and A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974). Regarded as a leader in Manhattan’s
then-burgeoning downtown art scene, Wilson turned his attention to large-scale opera and,
with Philip Glass, created the monumental Einstein on the Beach (1976) which achieved
world-wide acclaim and altered conventional notions of a moribund form.
Following Einstein, Wilson worked increasingly with major European theaters and opera
houses. In collaboration with internationally renowned writers and performers, Wilson
created landmark original works that were featured regularly at the Festival d’Automne in
Paris, Der Berliner Ensemble, the Schaubühne in Berlin, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg,
the Salzburg Festival, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. At the
Schaubühne he created Death Destruction & Detroit (1979) and Death Destruction &
Detroit II (1987); and at the Thalia he presented the groundbreaking musical works The
Black Rider (1991) and Alice (1992). He has also applied his striking formal language to
the operatic repertoire including Parsifal in Hamburg (1991), Houston (1992), and Los
Angeles (2005); The Magic Flute (1991), Madame Butterfly (1993); and Lohengrin at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York (1998 & 2006). Wilson recently completed an entirely new
production, based on an epic poem from Indonesia, entitled I La Galigo, which toured
extensively and appeared at the Lincoln Center Festival in the summer of 2005. Wilson
continues to direct revivals of his most celebrated productions, including The Black Rider
in London, San Francisco, Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles; The Temptation of St.
Anthony in New York and Barcelona; Erwartung in Berlin; Madama Butterfly at the Bolshoi
Opera in Moscow; and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at Le Châtelet in Paris.
Wilson’s practice is firmly rooted in the fine arts and his drawings, furniture designs, and
installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Extensive
retrospectives have been presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He has mounted installations at the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam, London’s Clink Street Vaults, and the Guggenheim Museums in New York
and Bilbao. His extraordinary tribute to Isamu Noguchi has been exhibited recently at the
Seattle Art Museum and his installation of the Guggenheim’s Giorgio Armani retrospective
have traveled to London, Rome and Tokyo.
Each summer Wilson decamps to the Watermill Center, a laboratory for the arts and
humanities in eastern Long Island. The Watermill Center which brings together students
and experienced professionals in a multi-disciplinary environment dedicated to creative
collaboration. A three-day gala benefit and re-dedication of the reconstructed main building
is scheduled for the summer of 2006.

Wilson’s numerous awards and honors include an Obie award for direction, the Golden
Lion for sculpture from the Venice Biennale, the 3rd Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for
Lifetime Achievement, the Premio Europa award from Taormina Arte, two Guggenheim
Fellowship awards, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship award, a nomination for the
Pulitzer Prize in Drama, the Golden Lion for Sculpture from the Venice Biennale, election
to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Design Award for Lifetime
Achievement, and named as Commandeur des arts et des letters by the French Minister of
Culture.
From: www.robertwilson.com