CARRIE WILSON is an Aesthetic Realism consultant and teaches the class “The Art of Singing: Technique and Feeling” and is one of the teachers of the “Critical Inquiry: A Workshop in the Visual Arts”at the Foundation. She studied Aesthetic Realism with its founder, Eli Siegel, from 1969 to 1978, and continues her study in professional classes with Chairman of Education, Ellen Reiss. She is a graduate of Barnard College, with a degree in art history, and of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre where she studied with Sanford Meisner.
A mezzo-soprano, Ms. Wilson attended the Goldovsky Opera Institute and was featured artist in a Rachmaninoff program at Lincoln Center Library, under the auspices of Mrs. Serge Koussevitzky and the Musician’s Club of New York, for whom she was also soloist in the New York premiere of Julian Orbon’s Tres Cantigas del Re at the Spanish Institute. Off-Broadway she appeared in The Pinter Plays, and in the Carmines-Fornes musical Promenade.
With The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, in presentations based on Eli Siegel’s lectures on the great drama of the world, Ms. Wilson has portrayed such diverse characters as Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, and the title role in Sudermann’s Magda, among others. She also performs with the company in musical events at the Foundation, as well as across the country—including in New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Billings, Montana. The titles of some of these events are “Ethics Is a Force!—Songs about Labor,” “The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll, the Opposites, & Our Greatest Hopes—a Celebration!”
In conjunction with talks by her husband, composer Edward Green, she sang music from Sir Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at a conference honoring the composer at the University of Birmingham, UK; and the music of the troubadour Marcabru at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France. In 2007, she presented recitals of British and North American music in Rosario, Argentina, with the accompaniment of Dr. Green. She also conducted a master class in singing at the Escuela de Música Municipal.
In seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation Ms. Wilson has spoken on the lives and work of: Maria Malibran, Mary Garden, Georgette LeBlanc, Émilie de Châtelet, Mme. Roland, Grace Kelly, and others. She has lectured on “The History and Aesthetics of Opera” for the educational organization Elder Hostel, and on 20th-century song at Manhattan School of Music. Together with Dr. Green she presented a paper at Ithaca College as part of a symposium sponsored by The College Music Society, on Music and Lifelong Learning, entitled “Aesthetic Realism and the Art of Singing.”
Carrie Wilson was among the persons presenting “The Poetry of Eli Siegel: A Centennial Celebration!” at the Wheeler Auditorium of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library in 2002. In 2007, she presented the poetry of Eli Siegel at the Pontifical University in Buenos Aires, and, with Dr. Green, at ARICANA in Rosario, Argentina. In 2003 and 2008, under the auspices of the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office she presented, with co-author John Stern, their talk “The Brooklyn Bridge: A Study in Greatness” at the Brooklyn Bridge to the World Celebration on the 120th and 125th anniversaries of the Bridge.
Since 1972, Carrie Wilson has been a co-director and coordinator for the Terrain Gallery. She has organized numerous exhibitions of contemporary art in all media, based on Eli Siegel’s definitive Fifteen Questions, “Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?” With her colleague, founding director of the Terrain, Dorothy Koppelman, she spoke at the 31st World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) about the Terrain Gallery’s groundbreaking series of talks, Aesthetic Realism Shows How Art Answers the Questions of Your Life. Their talk was published in International Conversations through Art, (Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003). Ms. Wilson is the author of A Brief History of the Terrain Gallery 1955-2005. She also is a contributor to the catalogue for the 2011 exhibition “Napoleon Entering New York, works by Chaim Koppelman,” at the Museo Napoleonico in Rome, Italy.
Carrie Wilson is also a contributing author of the book Goodbye Profit System: Update (Definition Press, 1970; 1984), and her articles have appeared in The Journal of the Print World, Printmaking Today, and elsewhere on such subjects as Aesthetic Realism and Duke Ellington, “The Surprising and Abiding Opposites,” and “New York: This Great, Diverse City—How Should We See It?”
Ms. Wilson is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and is included in Who’s Who in American Art, Who’s Who of American Women, and Who’s Who in the World.