MacRae Wylde: Truth
Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy • Milton, MA • milton.edu/arts/nesto-gallery • Through June 18, 2022
Outside of Nesto Art Gallery at Milton Academy there is an exhibit by MacRae Wylde entitled TRUTH. Set back from the street with five panels of hand-crafted iron work, each displaying a single letter that spells out the word. From a distance, the letters seem to hover above the ground, yet to step closer is to see the irony of its position. The concrete wall that sits behind the exhibit has numerous, small indentations in the concrete, varying sizes as though the word truth itself had been peppered with some projectile response. Yet each letter of the word remains inviolate.
Inside Nesto Gallery stands Wylde’s second piece, child-like blocks fill the space, stacked one on top of the other. Each of the five, 18-inch metal blocks look like they have been heaped skyward as if Wylde was playing with innocence. The letters on each side spelling out four words: truth, honor, trust and faith.
“Truth doesn’t care what party you’re affiliated with, it doesn’t care who your parents are or who you love, it’s there. It’s not convenient but it’s there. We as a society have forgotten that truth is a starting point, not to be bent to one person’s agenda,” writes Wylde in text accompanying the exhibit.
Wylde began his anthology with Truth in 2019, creating a series of three separate exhibits that have crossed the country through shifting landscapes and audiences. This third exhibit has landed at Milton Academy, a fitting hamlet for TRUTH (and truth) to rest, in the halls of our future intermediaries.
Ian Torney, executive director and visual arts chair, has captured his students’ voices in several ways. Three life-sized, faceless papier-mâché bodies sit across from the sculpture caught in a perpetual angst and contemplation as if pondering the meaning of Wylde’s creation, while creative writing students have contributed essays with their personal experiences with truth.
“Most people view public art as an obstacle to move around,” says Torney. “The trick is to make something interesting, so that you pause to contemplate what’s there.”
Nesto Gallery is open to the public by appointment only at nesto_director@milton.edu.
—Maureen Canney