Who Guards the Art? Fred Wilson’s Guarded View, Museum Security Guards, and Equity in the Museum

Miranda Hynes

Advisor: Dr. Eddie Chambers

Abstract

This thesis connects the artist Fred Wilson—and the ideological framework surrounding his exhibits—with the modern museum labor movement. More specifically, it examines his work Guarded View (1991), a striking social commentary on the invisibility of museum security guards, and applies its message to modern-day guards in Baltimore, MD, the city in which Wilson created his influential exhibit, Mining the Museum (1992). With a focus on the decolonizing and anti-racist texts which Wilson reflects through his many installations, Guarded View is assessed in terms of the colonial frameworks of the museum institution, in terms of racialized labor, and in terms of the museum’s propensity to construct conceptions of the racialized “other.” This commentary is extended by an exploration of surveillance studies, a field which has asserted the deep relationship between surveillance technologies and the continuing enforcement of racial capitalism. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to advocate to museum professionals and art historians in particular that they recognize Wilson’s art for the political discourse it helped begin, and apply that discourse by standing in solidarity with all museum workers.