Robert Wilson

ROBERT WILSON (1941–2025) was among the world’s foremost theater directors and visual artists. After being educated at the University of Texas and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, he founded the New York-based performance collective The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in the mid-1960s, and developed his first signature works, including Deafman Glance (1970) and A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974–1975). With Philip Glass he wrote the seminal opera Einstein on the Beach (1976). His stage productions are unconventional in integrating a wide variety of artistic media, including dance, movement, lighting, music, and text. His drawings, paintings, and sculptures have been presented in exhibitions around the world and have received numerous awards for excellence, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and the Praemium Imperiale 2023 in Tokyo. Robert Wilson founded The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the arts in Water Mill, New York. He passed away there in 2025.