Artists Including Me: William Wegman was originally mounted by the Krannert Art Museum on the campus of the University of Illinois in Champaign. The show was curated by Kathleen Harleman and Kathryn Koca Polite. It opened there on January 30, 2015 and closed on July 25, 2015. For SJMA, with the help of the Wegman Studio, our curator Rory Padeken has expanded the show by approximately ten art works, including five rarely seen videos.

Krannert was a homecoming of sorts for Wegman because he received his MFA from the University of Illinois. There is a bit of irony here, too. (Biographical insert: William Wegman was born in Holyoke, MA in 1943, and he received a B.F.A. in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1965.) While Wegman started at Illinois with the intention of developing himself as a painter and printmaker, within a year the diverse Illinois environment pulled him in other directions. His interests shifted into video, photography and performance. His MFA project, an inflatable sculpture with electronics inside, was installed briefly in the lobby of the Krannert Museum. Unfortunately, this sculpture was not approved by the Illinois faculty, and it was condemned by the fire department. It took an extra summer of traditional painting (which Wegman thought to be dead) and print making to get his MFA awarded. And he left Champaign with the reputation as a trouble maker. In retrospect, that was high praise.

From 1966 through 1970, Wegman taught at the University of Wisconsin. He held on to his long term interest in photography and video, combining those with sculpture, broadly defined, and performance art. Wisconsin did not last, and in 1970 he taught for a year at Cal State Long Beach. That was an important stop because a Weimaraner pup was born in Long Beach in July 1970. Wegman bought this pup, named him Man Ray and discovered that he had a real affinity for the camera. Clearly, the partnership has succeeded.

Actually, Wegman's media from 1967 through 1985 were photography and video, and not just of Man Ray and succeeding Weimaraners, including Fay Ray and her pups. Any subject with whimsy worked for him. Then (suddenly?) in 1985, Wegman returned to painting. Again, with a sense of play and humor. The show we have exhibits all of these phases of William Wegman's work, including a number of drawings. For the most part, University of Illinois is left out.