William Wegman (Past Project)

Opening, 2014
1162 Prospect Street

15' 6"x 20' 6"
Wall Sponsors:
Gift of Mason Phelps
Ed and Kristen Rosen
Laurence and Cindy Bloch
Perlman Clinic / Ron and Monica Perlman

William Wegman’s quintessential style is on view in his mural, Opening. He is best known for photos and videos involving dogs, most often his own, in a variety of costumes and poses. His bold and light-hearted photography takes on a graphic nature in his mural, while also incorporating his well known and loved theme of Weimaraners. The crisp and simple nature of this image captures the viewer with playful composition and perfectly executed quirkiness.

William Wegman, a key figure in the West Coast conceptual art movement, has been recognized internationally for his videos, photographs, paintings and drawings. He is best known, however, for his work with his Weimaraners, an artistic collaboration that has spanned over forty years. Wegman was born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He received a B.F.A. in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1965 and an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana in 1967.

From 1968 to 1970 he taught at the University of Wisconsin. In the fall of 1970 he moved to Southern California where he taught for one year at California State College, Long Beach. It was while he was in Long Beach that Wegman got his first dog, a Weimaraner named Man Ray. Wegman’s work has appeared on Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street and David Letterman; on the cover of The New Yorker, in fashion shoots for Vogue and at the Sundance Film Festival. His work has also appeared, since 1970, in more traditional art venues with numerous retrospectives touring the US, Europe and Asia including the Walker Art Center, The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Centre Pompidou, Paris. Wegman lives and works in New York and in Maine.

Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann