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Dec 30, 2019
As a form of testimonial to celebrate the Wex's 30th, a few longtime staffers share some special memories of their time here.
While I have been on staff at the Wex for 17 years, some of my most powerful memories of this place occurred while I was finishing my undergraduate degree and transitioning to grad school at OSU. My first memory of the Wex was stepping inside Ann Hamilton’s Dominion in 1990 and feeling its intimate warmth: the cloth, the light, the life, the insects. My second memory involved passing Laurie Anderson as she was coming down the escalator from Mershon sometime in 1991 and thinking that this place must be the center of the universe.
Highlights from my time on staff include hosting Kerry James Marshall as he mentored and inspired a group of local youth during his residency project, Every Beat of My Heart. Bringing in Belgian composer Filip Bral to offer families and young children the opportunity to experience his imaginative productions Luna of the Tree and My Heart is a Penguin was a project that opened up possibilities for performing arts for young people in our community and remains close to my own heart. And personally, performances by Bill T. Jones, Feist, Miranda July, and William Forsythe, and Improbable Theater’s hilarious Panic, continue to roll around in my head. I also return to Ann Hamilton and her transformation of Mershon Auditorium in collaboration with SITI Company in 2015: the journey through the cavernous space, the weaving, the green dress, the written word.
Above images: Kerry James Marshall at the Wex in 2008.
The marking of an anniversary encourages remembrance. The Wexner’s 30th anniversary was marked last November, and the sheer volume of its documented activities—exhibitions, lectures, performances, screenings, readings, residencies, symposia—would make a mockery of any attempt to identify any single event, or even a handful of them, as definitive.
Still, one event stands out: in December 1989, two weeks after we opened, we screened Video Against AIDS, the first instance of AIDS-related programming here that persists, in different forms, to this day. I should add that I call out this memory because it in turn summons memories of two of the Wexner’s original staff members—Robert Scott Brooks, the visionary behind the Wex Store, and Mark Tappen, an invaluable goodwill ambassador as first director of Membership—stolen from us by HIV. Each of them, it must be said, was…definitive.
Image: from Barbara Hammer's Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of AIDS, part of the Video Against AIDS program co-curated by Horrigan for the Video Data Bank.
New Yorker art critic Peter Schjehldahl, in town to review our Luc Tuymans show, ordered a coffee to go—and was given a cup within a cup. He looked over at me wryly: “Just in case.”
That exchange brings to mind a moment during a curator’s gallery talk about the exhibition Frank Stella 1958, featuring the artist’s paintings created the year after he graduated from college. The free public event drew a healthy crowd (more than 60 people)—not bad for a Tuesday afternoon. Then, casually and unexpectedly, in walks Frank Stella himself. Frank Stella—art-world icon, one of the greats—just dropping by (although he had come to town for a member-only talk later that day). The curator greeted and introduced him, and the loquacious Stella subsequently co-led the tour, much to the delight of the crowd.
That moment perfectly embodies the Wex: Artists, filmmakers, writers, and just generally interesting people roam these angular spaces. You might want to be here—just in case.
Image: Frank Stella at the Wex in 2006.
