Thomas Wilfred (June 18, 1889 – Aug 15, 1968) Personal note: It is fascinating to me that Thomas Wilfred passed shortly before the original Lumonics Light & Sound Theatre got under way in Miami. Lumia and a color organ were essential ingredients in the multi-media experience. "While many people had experimented with light as an artistic medium (most notably the color organs) Wilfred was the first to speak of light as a formal art-form. He coined the term “lumia” to describe “an eighth art” where light would stand on its own as an expressive art-form. Wilfred was passionate that lumia should be a silent art. Wilfred’s mechanisms were often complex designs that have been described as from the “Rube Goldberg school”. He was a trained artist, but had little mechanical schooling. That said, his devices were very sturdy, and many still function with most of the original parts. In 1951, he was included in the influential Museum of Modern Art exhibition 15 Americans, alongside Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. One of his installations, “Lumia Suite, Opus 158,” enchanted MoMA visitors from 1964 until 1980, when it was dismantled and placed in storage. The Museum of Modern Art owns three Wilfred lumia compositions, and many artists of the Psychedelic era were inspired to work with light after seeing the MoMA compositions. Because of his influence on this generation of artists, Wilfred’s final work “Lucatta, Opus 162” was included in the “Summer of Love” exhibition, which was hosted by the Whitney Museum in the spring of 2007. In 2017, Yale University Art Gallery organized the first exhibition dedicated solely to Wilfred and his light compositions in more than forty years. It was on view at Yale University Art Gallery from February 17, 2017 – July 23, 2017, before traveling to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. from October 6, 2017 – January 7, 2018" Wikipedia #thomaswilfred #lumia (at Lumonics School of Light Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBrwddhFN-y/?igshid=1e3kwmack8r79
