Barnes Foundation: Unbounded Histories

Museum Description: Unbounded Histories 2016-2017

Unbounded Histories is a sound intervention in the Barnes Collection Gallery. This site-specific piece by Philadelphia artist Andrea Hornick can be streamed on any web-enabled phone as you explore the collection.

Hornick’s piece comprises a string of poems written in response to specific works in the collection, which are identified on your phone. Delivered through headsets, the piece upends the authoritative art-historical content of standard museum audio tours with unexpected narratives and mysterious, dream-like imagery.

The artist worked for months directly in the collection, putting herself in a trance-like state in order to access the depths of her own psyche, letting the works of art lead her toward stories and images that the mind normally keeps buried. (Video footage documenting Hornick’s process can be found in the two classrooms within the Collection Gallery.) The narratives–deeply personal, and often with a feminist edge–emerged from these sessions.

The resulting juxtaposition of sound and sight encourages us to reconsider works in the Barnes collection as portals to the unconscious.

Martha Lucy, Deputy Director for Education & Public Programs and Curator

Unbounded Histories contains a string of 13 shorter poems; one for each of 13 rooms within the 23 rooms that comprise the Barnes Collection Galleries. About 60 works of art from varying time periods are connected in a narrative sourced from art history and the artist’s intuitive practice. Below are two of the 13 rooms’ poems. Please contact the artist if you would like to listen to the entire, Unbounded Histories.