Beginning this Friday, November 3, New York’s School of Visual Arts (SVA) will honor Richard Wilde, the now-retired inaugural chair of the College’s BFA Design Department with “Wilde Mind,” an exhibition celebrating his life and legacy. Designed and curated by current and longtime faculty member and chair of the College’s 3D Design program Kevin O’Callaghan, “Wilde Mind” will span from Wilde’s early years growing up in Brooklyn to his 50-year tenure at SVA, during which he taught more than 10,000 students and hired more than 900 faculty. Presented by SVA Galleries, it will be on view through Saturday, December 9, 2023, at the SVA Chelsea Gallery.
Hired to teach at SVA in 1969, Wilde was eventually appointed chair of the Advertising Department and art director of the SVA Press (now the Visual Arts Press), before going on to officially create the BFA Design program. He retired in 2019. An award-winning designer, art director, author, and laureate of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and the One Club Hall of Fame, Wilde continues to be widely regarded as a legend in the industry.
Through thousands of objects and artworks from his own personal collection, as well as from his former students, “Wilde Mind” invites viewers on a tour of the evolution of artist and educator. Wilde’s pencil drawings from his youth, photographs and collages intermingle with WWI- and WWII-era toys and ephemera, plus a site-specific mural tribute to Wilde by former student and artist Timothy Goodman (BFA 2007 Graphic Design).
“For the past 50 years, I have created conditions for the possibility of students to move from a reactive, automatic, predictable way of problem-solving to a state where free thought is available,” Wilde says. “This exhibition speaks of my journey confronting that challenging condition.”
Each of the gallery’s four divided sections will represent a part of Wilde’s story, beginning with his childhood drawings and early influences in the private Sea Gate community near Coney Island where he came of age a devoted Brooklyn Dodger fan. The son of prolific memorabilia collectors, Wilde himself has amassed an enormous array of items like brass doorknobs, beach passes, antique cast-iron soldiers, curiosity cabinets and pharmacists’ mortars and pestles, hundreds of which will be on display. Elsewhere in the gallery, an homage to Wilde’s teachings zeroes in on his signature Visual Literacy course, taught to all students in the Design and Advertising programs. With a focus on creative problem-solving, his curriculum challenged students to visually express emotions, sounds and abstract concepts, often within strict compositional parameters—and inspired three textbooks, co-written by Wilde with his wife and fellow SVA faculty member Judith Wilde (MFA 1994 Illustration as Visual Essay; BFA 1979 Fine Arts).
In the final section, O’Callaghan has meticulously gathered work by former students and notable projects Wilde executed throughout his SVA tenure—including his departments’ annual Senior Library publication, SVA yearbooks, video works and the Public Advertising System, for which students collaborated to create public-service messaging campaigns.
Designed to feel like a stroll through the brilliant artistic mind of a beloved teacher and mentor, “Wilde Mind” will tell the story of Wilde’s endless quest for creativity and desire to document and preserve visual excellence.
Richard Wilde portrait by Nigel Parry.
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