The winter blues are in full effect, but art is always soothing, especially on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I went to the Palo Alto Art Center to see a small exhibit of photographs by Richard Barnes, a Bay Area artist who is known for exploring the role of the museum in our culture with his pictures. Photographs taken inside museums on display in a museum—it was all very meta. Barnes's photos go beyond simple documentation as he deliberately looks for unusual juxtapositions, such as the stuffed zebras wrapped in plastic bags as a gallery assistant paints a savannah landscape behind them at the California Academy of Sciences. Many of his photographs are taken inside of natural history museums, and he perfectly captures the feelings of unease and fascination that I always get in such institutions. I don't like looking at taxidermied creatures, yet once they're in front of me it's hard to look away, no matter how much they make my skin crawl. Come to think of it, I had the same reaction to Byatt's The Biographer's Tale. Interesting.

I remain captivated by the idea of the existence of a past that refuses to depart completely, but instead lies buried, quietly insisting, with the help of archaelogists, to interrupt the seeming continuum of our collective present.

Barnes wrote that for his Still Rooms & Excavations, the body of work he assembled after being asked to document the renovation of the Legion of Honor in 1995; a few pieces from Still Rooms were included in this show. The quote reminds me of Howard Mansfield writing about philosophies of preservation in The Same Ax, Twice. Museums are physically unable to collect every single existing thing, nor do they necessarily want to. Does it do any good to have an array of beautiful extinct insects pinned under glass? A museum might make bank on a blockbuster retrospective, but what if that artist died cold and hungry? There has to be a balance.

I went home that evening and watched Les Diaboliques, which had me sweating bullets by the end. I had no idea it was going to be quite so suspenseful. The card that came onscreen after the end title told me not to ruin the movie for my friends by talking about it too much, so I won't. Let me just be clear that this was the original 1955 French movie directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, not the recent American remake with Sharon Stone.

Palo Alto Art Center