The Sculptor as Afro-Humanist: The Ed Wilson Art Exhibit

Welcome to "Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere," an IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere.  In this episode, we are joined by Tom McDonough, adjunct curator and professor of art history, to discuss the ongoing exhibit at the Binghamton art museum titled Ed Wilson: The Sculptor as Afro-Humanist. McDonough walks us through the incredible 45 year career of Ed Wilson, and we explore the process of creating such an extensive exhibit as well as the ways in which the project is still ongoing through the collection of oral histories.

If you would like to contribute to the Ed Wilson oral history project, you can send an email to edwilsonproject@binghamton.edu

Transcript

Welcome to Confluence humanities in the public sphere, and IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects at Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere. I'm your host, Josh Kluever. Ed Wilson may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of important American artists. But a new exhibition at the Binghamton University Art Museum hopes to change that. Wilson was an innovative sculptor, and he taught at Binghamton University in the Department of Art and Art History from 1968 to 1992. In September, the exhibit titled Ed Wilson, the Sculptor as Afro-Humanist, opened at the art museum and will run until December 9. Joining me today is Tom McDonough, adjunct curator and professor of art history at Binghamton University, who was one of the lead organizers of the exhibit, we will discuss the incredible 45 year career of Ed Wilson and his impact on American art. We also explore the process of creating such an extensive exhibit, and the ways in which the project is still ongoing through the collection of oral histories. Tom, thank you for joining me.
It's such a pleasure, Josh.
So before we begin, I'll have you introduce yourself. But I should admit that my background in art probably ended in the eighth grade. And I didn't do well in that class, which is probably why I gave it up. So I'm very grateful to have you to kind of guide me and our listeners through this the career of Ed Wilson. So do you mind if you kind of introduce yourself kind of explain the different hats that you wear here on campus your interests? Before we dive into Ed Wilson, of course,
well, I'm a professor of art history here. I've been at Binghamton for 25 years work on modern and contemporary art broadly, let's say much of my scholarly work is actually in postwar France. And I've been really interested in art and politics in France from 45 to 68, into the mid 70s. But I also wear let's say, another hats here, as well, indeed, which is my work with the Binghamton University Art Museum. Over the last, say, seven or eight years now, I've really been deeply engaged with organizing exhibitions and helping build the collection. It's been an incredible opportunity to work directly with art objects and to work directly with audiences something I really enjoy. So who is Ed Wilson? Yeah, it Wilson is a fascinating character. He's someone who is born into a very established middle class black family in Baltimore, in 1925. His father works at a black college there, Morgan Morgan State College, Now Morgan State University, his mother was a school teacher, they come from a line of Community Oriented figures and in the African American community in in Maryland, which we could talk more about as well. And he grows up there, essentially, with, you know, indeed, a strong interest in architecture, he really thinks that a certain point, that's what he wants to pursue as a career, but all that's interrupted in 1943, when he's drafted into the army, and in the midst of World War Two. And, you know, that's a really defining experience for Wilson, you know, he had grown up in a relatively, let's say, protected Black World in Baltimore. I mean, obviously, of course, in the 1920s and 1930s. In the US, it's a very segregated society. Maryland is in many ways, a southern state, below the Mason Dixon Line, but in that urban world, and in that middle class, let's say he can exist, he and his family in something of a bubble that ends abruptly in 1943. With the, with the draft, being sent immediately to the deep south for basic training or basic training is going to be in Baltimore, in Georgia and Mississippi, under white officers, of course, and he has a very direct experience of white American racism in the in the harshest possible terms, let's say, and he will be stationed in the China Burma India theater during the war, which is a very important theater. He's involved in a major project, they're building the ledo Road, which was a road up through the Himalayas to help supply Chinese resistance to Japanese invasion. It's an amazing story, an engineering kind of miracle building something like 1200 miles of road in just over a year's time, largely done by black engineering troops, right. Black troops in the Second World War were often support service and engineering. Uh, figures rather than, let's say serving directly on the front lines, but he never can get promoted. You know, it's a it's an experience of butting heads continually with a white officer class, and it makes them realize that architecture doesn't seem like a very likely road forward. The idea of coming back to the States studying and then running up against a set of brick walls really doesn't appeal to him. So when he is demobilized in 46, and returns to the US, he decides to go to college, right? He attends the University of Iowa, very progressive institution, racially in those years, let's say, and becomes really interested in art at that point, and sees that as a as a possible way forward into a career as an artist and a career as a teacher. So does his BA there continues on to do a one year master's in art, which would give him the credentials for teaching essentially, and study sculpture there. It's, it's where his interest in sculpture really takes takes flight. And as I said, I was progressive, both in terms of its openness to students of color at that time, but also in its art pedagogy. The program in art there was being run by someone from New York City who really brought the values of modern art modernism out to the American Midwest and brought working active artists out onto the faculty. And I know that doesn't sound very innovative. But in the 1940s, that was really unusual. And that was very advanced, I would say the University of Iowa was one of the most advanced programs in art. In those years, Wilson learns to sculpt traditional idea, you know, methods of carving, carving stone, carving wood and the light. And when he graduates he in 1951, he takes a job in the American South at a black college in Durham, North Carolina, at what was then NCC, a North Carolina Central. Now NCCU. He begins his career there in 1951, will stay there until the mid 1960s. And it's in the context of the South that two things really take root for him. One is his development of a national reputation as a sculptor or lower, let's say first local and regional but soon national very quickly. He's an extremely ambitious figure from from the beginning with a real vision for his art. At the same time as he's building his sculptural practice. He is also becoming involved in the burgeoning civil rights movement and the location of Durham is really key there in North Carolina. By the end of the 1950s 1959, you have the first lunch counter sit ins, which start just down the road from Durham and Greensboro, North Carolina with students from another historically black college a&t. Within days, students at NCC take up the same strategy and begin occupying seats at lunch counters, theaters, all these segregated accommodations in the south. And Wilson is a huge supporter Wilson is actively involved. He's ferrying students down to the protest sites. He's helping to bail them out of jail, he is organizing citizens of his own, and he is becoming very involved with the Congress of Racial Equality with corps and with FLOYD McKISSICK, who becomes a lifelong friend in those years, you know, so it's an incredibly dynamic time. 13 years that he's at NCC in Durham. There are two factors that are involved in him leaving and coming ultimately here to Harper what was then Harper College of Binghamton. And the first is a recognition of the the limits as an artist on what he could accomplish, being based in in the south, that there was a recognition of of the provincialism in a sense of his setting of the of the poor funding that black colleges had, in many ways continue to have unfortunately today that really set certain limits on what he could accomplish. So there's an artistic frustration there are an artistic limitation. And there's also you know, after five years of really intense activity in the civil rights movement, there's an exhaustion with that continual battle and even really with with with physical threats, you he talks about nights that the Durham police had to park a police car out in front of his family home because of threats from the Klan and other white groups. There's a desire, I think, on both counts to find a different situation. He's fortunate that at that moment, Harper was expanding. And in particular, Department of Art here, which had until that time, only been composed of art historians. So if you can believe this nightmare art historians were teaching drawing painting and sculpture for for the for You know, decade plus of the department's existence doing doing doing yeoman's work, of course, but still, they want to professionalize the Art Studio program they want to hire the first working artists to teach here, there was a colleague at Harper, that was very close to Wilson is art historian, Stanley Ferber, who had they had met actually in Iowa, back in the early 1950s, came up to Harper and in 63, and the following year, encourages the department to higher ed Wilson. And so Wilson comes up here to Binghamton in 1964. He's not the first black faculty on campus, there was an economist here earlier, but a very early African American hire, brought in as an associate professor, but by 1967, and promoted default, I think, I believe the first full professor, first full professor among black faculty here at Binghamton, and builds what is now the Department of Art and Design is, you know, a crucial figure in shaping the teaching of art here on the on campus, but also continues to be very active. As an artist, a big exhibition is held of his work here in 1966, that gathers the previous, let's say, 15 years of art activity. That exhibition leads to his first major public commission. As I said, as you said, rightly, in the introduction, he is someone who becomes deeply committed to making a public art for the modern world for our contemporary world, let's say. And that really begins in 1966, when the press on bulletin approaches him with a commission for a memorial to John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated three years earlier. And this is part of a larger urban renewal project in Downtown Binghamton, where a number of old buildings are being torn down, and the area around the intersection of Shenango. And Henry streets is being redesigned. And there's going to be a small park there. And they asked Wilson to design a memorial but to design the park as a whole, not just not just a standalone sculpture, but an entire setting for it, which begins a process that will, I think, become the dominant passion and a sense for the rest of Wilson's career for the next almost 30 years, which is to think through what a public art can be that commission in 66, inaugurated in 68, still standing down there today, although in a very altered setting, that really opens up an incredibly productive, almost decade, I would say, a Wilson's life, maybe the most productive decade, because there's a conjunction of things happening in the wake of the civil rights struggle, the art world, a predominantly white institutional world in this country suddenly wants to catch up, let's say with its with what you know, what had been a long ignoring of African American art. And so what you have at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, is a real emphasis on trying to write a history that had not been acknowledged at all by the white art world. And so you have a number of important exhibitions, organized by museums that tour the country, assembling that forgotten history, Wilson is a central figure in all of that. So he's very active in exhibitions, including the monumental two centuries of black American art organized by David Driscoll, senior black artists and art historian in 1976. So for the Bicentennial, the first really major survey of 200 years of African American art that begins in Los Angeles and tours the country, Wilson is an important figure in that exhibition. To that on the one hand, the ability to really show work at a national scale. The second is really a renewed interest in the role of public art, which, let's say had a real flourishing in America in the 1930s under the New Deal, but which in the post war world had kind of languished, we had a well like what we are historians, derisively called, like plop art, you know, some big abstract thing plopped in front of an office building, or a government building, that kind of world by the 1970s, you have a real interest in in trying to think about a public art that truly can speak to its audience. And Wilson isn't a, you know, again, is able to really take advantage of that and shape, I think, a body of work, not just for anonymous public, but I would say for a black public. I mean, he's really committed to making work for black institutions for educational institutions, primarily schools, high schools, libraries and the like. And that becomes, where much of his energies are spent from the late 60s through the mid 1980s Really, we'll continue to work and teach here until the early 90s. he retires in 1992. Continuous as active a career as he can. And making art at that point is his he's getting weaker that early rheumatic fever had weakened his heart. And he had a serious stroke in the late 1970s. All of which make can imagine making sculptures of intense physical activity. So there were challenges for him. But he is always in the studio always thinking about the next project really, until his death in 1996, when we should have recognized his contributions, his significance as a as an artist of a national stature, but but we didn't. The New York Times ran an obituary, so there was some awareness of his importance, but locally here on campus, other than the usual memorial that we might have for a faculty member who we've lost, there wasn't any large scale attempt to bring together the work and reassess it. So this exhibition, this project, you could say, is coming agenda, almost a generation to eat. But I'm going to say better late than never. Oh,
that is great. It's such a long career, very important career. And I think you have walked us through it. One thing I want to kind of ask is you, you mentioned this change from the clip art like that would have been in front of libraries. Can you kind of talk about what Ed Wilson's art style was like, What made it different I remember looking, I walked by like the falling man sculpture that is on campus. The first thing that it evokes in me and I may be just wrong is it looks like bones. Like it's a very visceral type of artwork, can you kind of explain his art style and what kind of emotions perhaps he's trying to invoke? In? Yeah,
indeed, and, and, you know, my outline of the career really focused on exterior things and ignored the art in many ways. So let's talk a little bit about what the work looks like. What I want to say is that Wilson is trained in the 1950s. And what's known as direct carving, right, which is the idea that you're going to take a piece of stone or a piece of wood, look at it, and think about what the material wants to be. And now he was working in a figurative style. It's, it's it's a recognizable body that we get from it. But it is a very mid 20th century almost existential idea of the risk of cutting into this resistant material, making a mark that you can't take back, right. It's not like in a painting where if you put a mark, and you don't like you can rub it off, or you can paint over it. Once the chisel hits the material, that Mark is there forever, it can't be done away with that notion of not working from a pre planned design, not simply working from sketches and the like, really is how he is trained, and where the early work comes from. And I think what he does is he takes I mean, this, this idea of direct carving was really developed in Europe by modern sculptors in the early 20th century, who he takes that and asks what I would say like, what does a black version of that process look like? And what does it mean to bring the black figure into a history of sculpture that in the West has been dominated by white bodies? So let's say like, the major piece his what we would call in the traditional sense, master piece, right? The piece that proves to the world that you are no longer I'm your apprentice, but have no you know, but can can you know, train others yourself. That work is called Sibley, the sculpted over a couple of years in the early 1950s. From a 300 pound block of Georgia marble, like Georgia marble, with gray and black streaking through it, taking up the figure of the female nude. And taking up a figure from Greek like Greco Roman mythology, civilly, the mother of all living things, God's humans, animals, plants, right, but making it a non white body. And he talks about wanting to not simply make a black body but actually bring all of human ethnicity together, he talks about bringing the three I mean, this is a very mid century language, but you know, it's Wilson's time, like the three races of humanity together, you know, so the Asian, the African and the and the and the Caucasian, you know, but the face when when looks at it is very much coming from black bodies, but also African sculpture after me a West African wooden masks, I mean, it's, it's this beautiful form. So this is where he really begins, you know, with this direct carving, working in wood working in stone, and thinking about how to picture black bodies in a medium that really was devoted to a very exclusionary model of beauty, but he begins to feel the limitations of that. I think by the mid 60s, it takes a long time to carve a big piece of stone, a big piece of wood. I think he wants to be more nimble. And I think he's increasingly wanting to express more complex ideas that he doesn't feel can be embodied in that material. So when it comes to by the time he comes to Binghamton and 64, he's really leaving direct carving behind and molding in plaster and clay that can be cast in bronze, and that allows for him to take on much more ambitious subjects. And what we find by the mid 60s here in Binghamton isn't creating these very complex allegories, symbols of modern experience, often leaving the black body behind the specifics of a kind of physiognomy, in favor of much more anonymous figures. I think he's trying to address a more universal, I mean, let's call it for the time being at least a more universal idea. He becomes really interested in like the ideas of alienation. It's the mid 60s, right? That's a that's a big word in sociology and on campuses all over the country. Alienation, human alienation under conditions of technocracy bureaucracy, and he's really interested in the ways that people are struggling with that are molded or or hollowed out by it, which might get us to the bone like body that you call our attention to and falling man. And I think you're absolutely right to describe it that way. I think they are a bone like hollowed out of forms, often as in falling man, sort of suspended in space, you know, in this sort of, almost helplessness, you know, precariousness, these are the kinds of works he's making. Indeed, the JFK memorial here in Binghamton, doesn't depict Kennedy at all right, Kennedy isn't in that memorial. And what we have are instead these plaques, seven plaques, he calls them the seven seals of silence, which depict what he calls the humanity in the grips of alienation, inactivity, non communication, non involvement. He was interested in, in a sense, like what Kennedy was trying to bring people out of for him Kennedy was this figure that was encouraging people to take control of their lives. And to be honest, the memorial has a mixed reception, because there's no iconic depiction of the president. The plaques show these very abstracted figures in very alienating kind of mode. And people have a hard time understanding it. You can see in the local newspapers, they're running interviews with Wilson, they're asking people to comment on it, explain it. But it's, it's it is a hard thing to understand Wilson is drawing on ideas from Thomas Carlisle's Sartore race Sartorius. You know, I mean, there's all these kinds of dense philosophical references that people have a hard time grasping. And in the wake of that experience, I think Wilson really does reassess what he wants to be doing. And I think there's two changes that that experience leads to, on the one hand to bring him back to a more recognizable figural style, a less less abstracted human form. And it also leads him to question the idea of making monuments simply for a kind of anonymous public and instead wanting to really work with the public, he could identify more clearly an African American, largely African American public. And so what we find in the 70s is a much more comprehensible form a figural form, but really devoted to celebrating black history. So we have commissions for a piece on Ralph Ellison a kind of portrait of Ralph Ellison for a Ralph Ellison branch library in Oklahoma City, we find a big piece on jazz musicians, a jazz quintet playing in a studio, a big relief for high school in Brooklyn, we find middle passage, maybe his most ambitious work, depicting the abduction and transportation of enslaved Africans made for a black high school in Brooklyn, we find in the late 1970s, freestanding portrait sculpture of Frederick Douglass, it was a potential commission from the National Park Service for Harpers Ferry that doesn't pan out. But but that's a real shift. And I think you know, those are those are the big steps in the career, those three key moments. And
I think that's shows to why people should go to the exhibit and see the transformation of his art style. So let's kind of pivot here and then kind of talk about the exhibit itself, kind of what is in the exhibit? What can people expect to see when they go there? Where does this art collected from who did you have to kind of work with to kind of bring this exhibit together?
Sure. I'm very proud to say that we're able to present a comprehensive overview of Wilson's work Now not everything of course, because some things are large and permanently sited where they are. Other works are lost and we're hoping we might rediscover them someday, but nevertheless, we can show Wilson's career from His earliest development the first works he's making in North Carolina, through to very late things he makes before his death in the in the 1990s. And so people can come in and see gallery filled with a lifetime accomplishments of Wilson, which is really an incredible privilege, I would say in terms of where work comes from the museum itself had a core set of holdings, Binghamton had already collected, maybe four or five key pieces from the career mostly earlier 50s and 1960s. And, you know, the the people who really deserve the most credit, the people who've really preserved Wilson's legacy, till this point, are His children. It's the family, his his daughter and son, who have done amazing work in keeping and preserving a body of Wilson sculpture. And so the biggest grouping of work really comes directly from their collections that they've lovingly maintained. These last, you know, almost 30 years. After that, then it becomes a process of discovery. I mean, I knew, I knew that we were going to have to reach out to his children. But from there, it becomes much more of a hunt and something that we aren't historians love to do, I suppose. So there are loans from some public collections that hold Wilson's work, Howard University's art gallery, the first public institution to purchase Wilson in the early 1960s. We have a beautiful carved alabaster work from from the early 1960s comes to us from from Howard, the Albany Institute of Arts and Sciences, has loaned a beautiful work Duke University CUNY. So there are loads coming from public collections, and then a handful of private collections as well, both local and around the East Coast, folks who either were students of Wilson or got to know him through his activism and have, again cherished that work for in many cases, decades. So it's really the generosity of those public and private collectors that have allowed us to pull this all together. However, I should say one other thing that really made it possible, which is that, you know, to borrow work entails having it packed and shipped, and the like, all of which is quite expensive insurance and the like for art cost a lot of money. None of this could have been done without the support of the Terra foundation for American art, very generous funder of this. We approached them early on in the process, asking them to be a sponsor of the exhibition. We were successful in that grant application. And it's the support of Terra that really enabled this to happen.
Yeah, I think it just speaks to the power of these type of public humanities projects, like a lot of work goes into this little someone in the big hunting community. You don't have to go to Howard University to see this one exhibit like it has been collected. It is an incredible opportunity that I hope a lot of people take advantage of both the students and the faculty on campus as well as the broader kind of wide Binghamton community. But there's not it's not just Ed Wilson stuff that is there are there other kinds of smaller exhibits that are kind of paired with this for people to explore? Absolutely,
this fall is a moment to come see African American art at Binghamton University. In addition to the Wilson exhibition, we're also presenting an overview of African American art held in the permanent collections. So work that is always here at Binghamton that's organized by Claire Kovacs, curator of exhibitions and collections here at the museum. And I really want to say that, over the past five years, the museum has really made a concerted effort to bring in new works of art by African American artists. It's not to say that there weren't already a number of works in the collection, but we recognized it as a as a gap in many ways. And Diane Butler, the museum director, working with Claire, and myself, has really built an amazing array of 20th century African American art is an incredible legacy that will be at the university forever for students and faculty to use as a resource. So I highly recommend spending time with it. It's very impressive. And there's also another work on loan which will be at at the University for a full year. This is work by an African American artists David Hammons. We could say if like Wilson represents African American sculpture of the mid 20th century, someone trained in the 50s. And, and shaped by that moment, Hammonds really represents a next generation coming of age in the late 1960s, early 1970s, shaped by Black Power and also shaped by newer artistic currents. So if Wilson is someone who was really trained in traditional methods called Irving molding and the light Hammonds built a career around scavenging objects from the streets. And there's a, an incredible, we would call it an assemblage, let's say a sculpture composed of found materials that form a kind of portrait, I think of someone on the street that he made in the late 1980s. It's on loan to us from the art bridges collection very generously. It will be here for the full year. But it is, I mean, I would say you would have to go to a museum of modern art or a Whitney Museum to see a work of this caliber by David Hammons. It is astonishing to have it with us for the year that we'll be around for a while. So you have time to visit that as well. Yes, I
looked up a couple of examples of Hammonds work and to say that it is unconventional, it is something that is evocative of a lot of emotions. And I think it's the perfect kind of pair with Ed Wilson's kind of legacy of like, you're moved to think something, you don't know what that is. But hopefully you will discover it. Over the course of of admiring these pieces. As we're wrapping up here, I do want to kind of touch on the oral history project, that is also an important part of the overall at Wilson kind of rediscovery, because as we were kind of having these conversations, we need to remember that he also was a teacher, at the University for such a long time. And I can't imagine a more hands on work with with, with a professor than being an art, like, you know, you can go to your office hours in like philosophy or biology. But if you're taking an art class, or you're a student of Ed Wilson, that is probably a very tangible experience can what is kind of speak to that, what you've discovered in the oral history projects and other things that you're hoping to kind of get at? No, absolutely, this
was an important element of the project for us. The recognition that this was not going to be simply a matter of of researching and archives and libraries and the like, but also really had a profound human component. And Wilson was here at Binghamton, for a long time shaped a lot of students lives in very profound ways. And so we really wanted to make an effort to look to be able to paint us as full of portrait of Wilson as possible. So not just as artists, but as father, as a friend, as mentor, as community member, we reached out to those multiple constituencies, and through the very generous involvement of Derrick Scott, a community member who's been active, and in the museum began this oral history project, which has assembled dozens of testimonies to Wilson, that I think, look, I, I only joined the faculty in 1998. So I never met Ed Wilson, he passed away in 96. So I have no direct experience of the man. And I can look at the work. And of course, that's an artist story. And that's what we do. And I can I can think I think at a relatively complex level about it, but in order to really understand who who the artist was as a as a human, as a person, it really demand it really requires that that testimony. And you know, we have wonderful stories, I mean, the stories beginning with his own children, you know, which which are so revealing to stories of him changing students lives, right, people coming in and deciding to become an artist because they took classes with Ed Wilson, I mean, and that was true even in NCC right. One of his students at NCC who played on the football team there would go on to a very prominent professional football career, Ernie Barnes, when he retired from football, takes up resumes, take resumes, the painting practice that he had begun with Ed Wilson, you'll really credits a life post professional football, to his experience of Ed Wilson, as a teacher, you know, whose paintings of black life are now highly coveted by collectors around the country. Let's say Wilson touched so many people in the commitment to the Oral History Project, which will enter the university archives as an ongoing one certainly. And I should say one other thing, in terms of the afterlife of this project, which will be a catalog that really both accounts for the exhibition, but also talks about all those big public art projects that couldn't be included or represented there. And that will, I hope, stand as a as a long term record of the accomplishments of this artist. And let's say I hope to all those PhD students out there listening to this, hopefully encourage people to continue to pursue research. I've been able to unearth a lot. But I know there's more out there. There's more archives out there. I'm sure there's more artwork out there. Someone who wanted to devote their time to it, I think could give us an even fuller picture. I think we're just laying the groundwork.
I can't wait for the acknowledgement section in some dissertation in the future like I was listening to compliments will be over the moon if that is what happens. But I think so I think more work should be done continue to be done. It's such an important legacy. I want to close by this kind of asking you a broader kind of question about what you hope visitors take away Les from this exhibit, it's free to the public, I hope people come and experience it kind of what do you hope people experience from this exhibit?
I think there's a word you've been using through this that I've avoided that I'll put it back on the table now, which is, which is beauty. Ultimately, I can talk about Wilson's importance. And I can talk about Wilson's historical actions in the civil rights movement, all these things, but really, ultimately, it comes down to the art itself. And I think what is striking for me, when we finally got all this work up in the gallery could see it all together is just what what beautiful and profound work it is. And it's, it's both complex and accessible. At the same time, I think I think there's, you know, at the baseline, it's, it's just this immersion in someone else's vision of of the world. Now, the fact that that vision is also informed by his life experience as an African American man at a particular moment, who had a profound intersection with history, who could count James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison among his friends. That makes it even more interesting. This is what art does for us, right art allows us to see the world through someone else's eyes. And that is a privilege. So I hope people enjoy that privilege. Well, Tom, we
gonna thank you for joining me today. Again, people go out and experience this exhibit. It'll be there until December 9. So thank you.
Thank you so much, Josh. It's a pleasure.
Thank you all for listening. If you're in the Binghamton area, I encourage you to check out the ED Wilson exhibit, which is free to the public and runs until December 9. If you'd like to contribute to the ongoing oral history project, you can find the link to more information in the show description. Once again, Confluence is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the humanities. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on your podcast app of choice and share it with family and friends. We'll be back soon with more amazing public humanities projects.