This was Ann Hamiltons installation at the Henry Art Gallery today. Who knows what it will look like tomorrow?
  • All photos DQ/JG
  • This was Ann Hamilton's installation at the Henry Art Gallery today. Who knows what it will look like tomorrow?

When Ann Hamilton's installation the common SENSE opened in October, the humble yet renowned artist explained to me that she wanted people to decide for themselves how many prints of dead animals they'd tear off the museum walls to take home.

Hamilton had placed dead and preserved animals on a low-resolution scanner, often bellies down, and printed the images on warm, unprecious newspaper stock. She then hung them in piles on the wall, and anyone was welcome to walk away with as many animals as desired.

The idea was that as the exhibition went on, the animals would become increasingly extinct. We'd get to see which ones disappeared the fastest, and to wonder why. The last page of every pile is blank.

Today, there are a few blanks—and in the case of one pile, somebody even tore off and absconded with the blank final page. (I'd love to hear the story of where that page ended up.)

But mostly, the piles are still plentiful. They're plentiful because the museum, presumably with Hamilton's blessing, instituted a rule, expressed in several signs, instructing visitors that they're only allowed to take home one animal print.

What greets you at the front desk. There are two more of these signs at the gallery to the animal prints galleries.
  • What greets you at the front desk. There are two more of these signs at the gallery to the animal prints galleries.

"People were slinging them over their arm," guard Mat Whiteley told me today.

That's what happened at the very beginning. Crowds at the opening were hoarding animals, seemingly thoughtlessly, like shoppers with shirts draped over their arms on their way into the dressing rooms.

The museum was afraid the prints would run out quickly and more meaninglessly than Hamilton intended, Whiteley said.

But at this point, "it would be interesting to see more of them disappear," he said.

Andy Le works the front desk and he agreed that Hamilton's original intentions aren't quite coming through given the added rule. Instead, there's a sense of enforced plenitude.

"It would be interesting to make people aware of their consumption but not to limit them," Le told me.

Maybe the rule will change again. It would be more interesting, I think, if it did. (If I can, I'll also ask Hamilton herself what she thinks of all this.)

This is the kind of exhibition that gets more interesting with use. Layers emerge.
  • This is the kind of exhibition that gets more interesting with use. Layers emerge.

When you can only take one, sometimes you change your mind halfway through tearing, leaving your second-choice animal looking like a collage of itself. That's an interesting phenomenon that would probably be happening less without the only-take-one rule. But even without the rule, Hamilton is really succeeding in making the marks of human touch visible in the art. There's a note at the start of the exhibition that quotes her talking about how reading a book doesn't leave marks. But visiting this show can.

The exhibition will last until April, and it will change all along the way. If you've seen it once, you really should go again. This isn't the kind of exhibition a critic should write about only once either. Frankly, the exhibition is more interesting today than it was in October. Edges of images are curled. New experiences in the other sections await, too—new texts are added throughout (they are submitted continuously on Tumblr—join in), or maybe you just didn't see everything last time because there's so much to see. I don't recall seeing a 1904 photograph of a malamute named Bob on either of my previous visits.

This picture of a woodpecker is 7-year-old Adebeys choice. Guard Mat Whiteley says hed choose the same picture. Adebey likes the woodpecker because its wings are
  • This picture of a woodpecker is 7-year-old Adebey's choice. Guard Mat Whiteley says he'd choose the same picture. Adebey likes the woodpecker because its wings are "cool and pretty." Mat likes the woodpecker because of the composition. I'm still a sucker for a picture of two tiny monkey-like hands reaching upward in an expanse of blank space.

As the other animal prints are torn away, these piles of pictures of humans grow. These pictures are taken in the museums lobby. Anyone can pose. The parts of the picture that appear in focus are the parts that touch a screen; its a special camera technology based on touch.
  • As the other animal prints are torn away, these piles of pictures of humans grow. These pictures are taken in the museum's lobby. Anyone can pose. The parts of the picture that appear in focus are the parts that touch a screen; it's a special camera technology based on touch.