For the final interview in his Artist as leader series, Joshua Sofaer talks to David Wilson, the Director of The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. They discuss the ‘epiphany’ that lead to Wilson founding a museum that promotes ‘the value of doubt’, as well as his approach to the process of leadership.
Wilson opened the museum in 1984, inspired by his training in the natural sciences and a career in making TV commercials and technical effects. The Museum of Jurassic Technology balances Wilson’s interests in both areas, combining a curiosity about natural objects with an interest in how they are presented.
He explains: “The museum is inspired by the history of the institution of the museum. We look back in some ways to the origin of the institution when a museum was not so specifically focused on one area, but when museums were encyclopedic. Works of art would be presented next to things of anatomical or biological interest. We describe it as a museum of natural history, history of science, history of art and ethnography. As we come up with new exhibits we just add to the list.”
These exhibits range from glass vitrines showcasing “vulgar remedies” such as consuming mice to cure chilblains, to the work of micro-miniaturist Hagop Sandaldjian, whose sculptures – including a proportionally accurate statue of Napoleon mounted in the eye of a needle – can only be viewed with the aid of a microscope.
Wilson cites a kind of ‘epiphany’ leading to him founding the museum: “The notion of having a museum, when it came to consciousness, just felt absolutely right. I had been churning on this dichotomy for a decade or more – a love of natural history and a love of putting things into the world. But I wasn’t conscious of where that was leading. One day it just occurred to me that I essentially wanted to build a museum… for 3 hours I was just writing as fast as I could write and it took me 5 years to complete all the ideas I had had that one morning.”
One of the imperatives of The Museum of Jurassic Technology is to promote the value of doubt as part of a wider institutional critique, but Wilson attaches little doubt to the outcome of what he has created: “It just felt absolutely right… The material that we are able to present is so compelling, and so interesting, and so wonderful, and the process is so nourishing – what’s to doubt?”
In common with other interviewees in the series, Wilson is a reluctant leader, viewing leadership as a living process – not something that is cerebral, but rather that is part of a process that happens because of what he has put out into the world:
“We are happiest when people leave inspired. I don’t know how leadership fits into the work that we do, unless you can consider inspiration as a form of leading. When I am inspired by something, it leads me forward.”
Listen to the full interview: David Wilson
Artist as leader resulted from Joshua Sofaer’s Clore Leadership Programme research in 2010/11 and focuses on how artists and artist-led organisations deal with the concept of leadership.The full series of interviews are now online: Artist Cornelia Parker; Melbourne’s Field Theory; Central Saint Martins’ Senior Lecturer Kate Love; First Draft in Sydney; artist and businessman Richard Layzell and Richard Hicks, and founder-director of 3331 Arts Chiyoda arts centre Masato Nakamura.
