Polly and Mark Addison Collection of Photography at the Denver Art Museum, 2010.435. © David Maisel
What We’ve Been Up To: People showcases more than 60 photographs of people from the Denver Art Museum's collection that have not been exhibited in their galleries before. The exhibition features a rich variety of portraits, self-portraits, and candid scenes that touch on the joys and challenges of everyday life as well as personal relationships, solitude, and the way people see themselves and each other. David Maisel's Library of Dust (267), 2005 is on view in the exhibition.
In 2005, Maisel learned that over 3,000 canisters containing cremated remains were recently rediscovered at Oregon State Hospital, a chronically underfunded mental health institution in Salem. The individuals were primarily patients who died between 1913–1971 and were unclaimed by kin. Maisel received permission to photograph the canisters, which were stored in an unassuming room, stacked three deep on pine shelves—this evolved into his project Library of Dust. The simple funereal urns are made of copper with leaden seams. Over time, the lead reacted with cremains inside and the surrounding environmental factors and corroded, creating beautiful mineral blooms in the most unexpected place. The colors and forms of the mineral encrustations on each copper urn are unique. In a strangely poetic way, the individuality of these souls began to reveal themselves again.
Learn more at denverartmuseum.org.
