Museum Anatomy is my life-project. I have been working on it for the past 15 years with my collaborator, Chadwick Gray. The project stems out of a series of site- specific performance-based artworks we were creating in San Francisco in the mid 90's. We were invited to create a performance in what is now the Berkeley Art Museum. We began with the question: What already exists in the Museum that we can make art about? And, eventually, we became interested in the art that exists in the storage facilities of the museum.

We already had a background with painting various images onto the body, so it wasn't a giant leap to recreate artwork from the museum storage facility onto the body. I won't go into to much process, though I will say, I work from looking at a color printout of the painting we choose to work from. I started using a projector to create the works, so we could figure out where it would go onto Chadwick's body - coincidences in the physical anatomy or in reference to the painting, or the history of the painting itself. However, while we were in Europe and SE Asia, I did not have a projector at my disposal...at which point, I am grateful for drawing skills!

After creating and exhibiting the work at the Berkeley Art Museum in 1996, we decided to explore other museum storage collections around the world. We were off to the Czech Republic next. It took us about 6 months to finally find out where their artwork was hidden. Due to all of the invasions and theft, the Czechs were very tight lipped, and as a result after literally almost 100 meetings with various curators, art directors and finally people from the US Consulate, we were able to track the paintings down to the storage cellars of a convent. We had to explain what we wanted to do with their paintings to a table full of nuns. Eventually, the main nun in charge, told us she would cooperate, though she didn't condone our project.

We found the stories behind the paintings to be of profound importance to our inspiration. One of the paintings we recreated, "Montenegro Woman with Child", was in storage because the court painter who created it, had an affair with the Montenegro woman in the painting. The child depicted in the painting was his illegitimate son. The court would not let them marry as she was seen as a common gypsy. She actually appears in several of his paintings.

Another painting we recreated from Prague, "Portrait of Marie Czartorsky", was painted in black and white. The reason was, during WWII, the painting was lent to a family for safe keeping. After the war, the gallery went to retrieve its painting, and not only was the painting gone, the family and their house were also gone. The painting no longer existed, except for a black and white photo that we held in our hands as the story was told to us by an 80 year old curator. He handed us this photo and said, "It is in your hands now." and tossed the file for the painting into the garbage. Thus, our "resurrection" of the painting is in black and white and the only documentation that remains of it that we know of.  (Coincidentally, a few years later, we were contacted over the internet on a Christmas morning by a man in Canada claiming to be Marie Czartorsky's great-great grandson!)

Through the years, we've gone on letter writing campaigns asking various museums to help us in our search for 19th century paintings of women, so that we could add to our collection.  The Victoria & Albert Museum corresponded with us for over a year through hand written letters, until we finally had permission to visit their Grand Staircase, which indeed, is a grand staircase with all of their unseen paintings hung salon style throughout the winding marble stairs.  The Prado and The Riena Sophia allowed us access to their libraries, storage facilities and allowed us to photograph paintings in the museums as well, which is traditionally unheard of.  We were accompanied by a group of four armed guards while we photographed Picasso's "Guernica", which we recreated at an art fair in Ft. Worth, TX at the start of the war in Iraq.  People yelled at us through the window we painted behind and someone even threw a soda at the window in protest of the meaning of the painting.

MuseuMAfricA in Johannesburg is one museum that will remain close to our hearts.  We were unable to fund our trip to South Africa, and they really wanted us to work with their paintings in storage.  So, they took slide positives of all of the images they had in their collection and mailed us their entire collection through the post office.  It was a beautiful gesture.  Many of the works we selected were works created by artists that were sent by kings of Europe who wanted documentation of daily accounts.  There were several paintings of African women going about their daily tasks.

When we visited Sicily, their Civic Gallery was being visited by a technician that actually restores paintings.  There was not a huge selection, as most of their collection was scattered throughout the homes of the island, either through purchases or other means.  We did find some very beautiful traditional works of Ave Maria and one of a girl playing with Roman soldier puppets.  And, we found "Orientalism" paintings very popular.  Apparently, it was fashionable for husbands to visit the far east an bring back clothing for their wives to wear while having their portraits painted.

When we moved to Thailand, which was our tenth country in which we created this work, we found that they did not have museums to choose 19th century paintings from.  We ended up choosing works that existed on the walls of various temples throughout the country.  Many of them based on religious texts.

The work continues, though at a slower pace these days.  We are now trying to find a place to exhibit this vast collection of recreated works.  There is upwards of about 60 works from 12 countries.  In order for us to exhibit the works, we must enlarge the slide positives into photographic prints that the actual size of the original paintings.  Many of the works that are very large, we have yet to see completed, as we only hold the slide positives.

Museum Anatomy has been published many times. Most recently in the "Harvard Design Magazine" in an article by author, Wendy Steiner and in 1998 it was on two pages of Ripley's Believe It Or Not!.  Two of the photographs were auctioned in 2008 at Sotheby's in Hong Kong.  And, as we look for a venue to have a retrospect of our decade long project, we continue to experiment and find new ways of recreating these hidden works of art meshing history with technology and the body with process and illusion.