Still Rooms & Excavations

Still Rooms & Excavations was a collaborative effort with my husband, Richard Barnes. This catalogue (and the traveling exhibition it accompanies) documents the seismic excavation of the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco and the ensuing discovery of a potter’s field underneath the museum. In designing Still Rooms, my desire was to highlight the photographs in a way that was both provocative and understated, allowing the images to speak for themselves. My own intervention was minimal, out of respect both for Richard’s work and for those buried beneath the DeYoung. The size of Still Rooms and Excavations reflects the enormity of the project itself, a project that literally delved beneath the surface. Like the site it documents, this piece has a tactility and emotional draw that are nearly palpable. The pacing of Still Rooms is as quiet as the title suggests: hushed and measured, almost to the point of stillness.