Frederick Weston (1946-2020) Memorial

Please join Gordon Robichaux, Visual AIDS, and the Weston Family on Friday December 10, 2021 at 7:30pm to celebrate the life of Frederick Weston (1946-2020).

St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 E. 10th St. New York, NY 10003

St. Mark's Church requires proof of vaccination and masks to attend, please RSVP by emailing gordonrobichauxRSVP@gmail.com as space is limited.

Please join us to celebrate the life of Frederick Weston: visual and performance artist, poet, fashion designer, activist, friend, mentor, cousin, and godfather. He died in October 2020 after a private battle with cancer.

Fred was an only child, raised in his grandparents’ home in Detroit by his mother Freda Weston Morman, his uncle, and three aunts. He was a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and Ferris State University in Michigan where he was instrumental in founding the Zeta Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the university’s first African-American fraternity.

Before establishing Gordon Robichaux, we were introduced to Fred’s work by Visual AIDS, an organization that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy. Fred’s long-standing relationship with Visual AIDS, as an artist-member and beloved friend of the community, nurtured and brought greater attention to his practice.

Having presented Fred’s work in exhibitions prior to establishing our gallery, Fred’s vision and art were foundational to the conception and direction of our program. We’ve had the honor of sharing his art, poetry, and performance at Gordon Robichaux on numerous occasions including a 2017 three-person exhibition; his first solo exhibition, Frederick Weston: Happening, in 2019; and in a two-person presentation at the Independent Art Fair in New York in 2020.

Frederick Weston's recent exhibition at Ortuzar Projects in New York ran from December 12, 2020—February 13, 2021. Organized in collaboration with Gordon Robichaux and conceived with Fred before his passing, the exhibition featured art from the past forty years including new works created specifically for this context. A publication dedicated to Weston’s practice published by Visual AIDS with an interview between Weston and Samuel R. Delany was released to coincide with the exhibition.

The legacy of Fred’s expansive vision and practice exceeds categories, occupations, and mediums, and will live on through his art, writing, and all those whose lives he touched. We’ve had the enormous privilege of knowing and working closely with him over the past five years, and we are humbled to carry Fred’s spirit and legacy forward in the years to come.

—Sam Gordon and Jacob Robichaux

Frederick Weston was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1946, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where he participated in the club scene before moving to New York City in the mid-1970s. He studied menswear design and marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and held a B.S. from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI, where he was instrumental in founding the Zeta Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the university’s first African American fraternity. He was a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who worked in varied media: collage, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, and creative writing. Over the course of his time in New York, he developed a vast, encyclopedic archive of images and ephemera related to fashion, the body, advertising, AIDS, and queer subjects.

In 2020, he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Roy Lichtenstein Award and presented a site-specific installation at the gallery in the Ace Hotel in New York. Solo exhibitions of Weston’s work include Frederick Weston at Ortuzar Projects, NY in 2020/2021; Frederick Weston: Happening at Gordon Robichaux, NY, in 2019 and at Ferris State University’s Rankin Art Gallery in 2011. Weston exhibited his work widely in group exhibitions: Souls Grown Diaspora, apexart, NY (curated by Sam Gordon); A Page from My Intimate Journal (Part II) —, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles; Heaven and Hell, Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles; By Appointment, Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles; Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, PA (curated by Nayland Blake); AIDS at Home, Museum of the City of New York, NY; This Must Be the Place, 55 Walker, NY (curated by O.O. & M.M. and Miles Huston); Inside, Out Here, La MaMa Galleria, NY (curated by Eric Booker); A Page from My Intimate Journal (Part I) —, Gordon Robichaux, NY; Art AIDS America, The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Alphawood Gallery, Chicago; Found, Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NY (curated by Avram Finkelstein); CUT HERE (with Matt Keegan and Siobhan Liddell), Gordon Robichaux, NY; Queer Artist Fellowship: Alternate Routes, Leslie Lohman Project Space, NY (curated by Osman Can Yerebakan); and Persons of Interest, Bureau of General Services, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, NY (curated by Sam Gordon).

In addition to numerous panels and readings organized by Visual AIDS, Weston participated in Queer Artists of Color in New York during the AIDS Epidemic, College Art Association of America, 2019 Annual Conference, NY; Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: Smithsonian Archives of American Art Symposium, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Fag, Stag, or Drag?, John Neff and Frederick Weston in Conversation, Artists Space, NY; Adult Contemporary: Matt Keegan, Siobhan Liddell, Frederick Weston, Gordon Robichaux, NY; Three Readings: Wayne Koestenbaum, Darinka Novitovic, and Frederick Weston, Gordon Robichaux, NY. In 2017, an oral history with Weston, by Ted Kerr, was published by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project.

Weston’s work has been lauded by Holland Cotter in The New York Times on three occasions and in numerous publications including Artforum, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula magazine. An obituary in The New York Times can be found here.