In 1990 Calle created a series photographs in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of the empty spaces left by recently stolen paintings and paired them with framed texts. In this case, the missing object is Chez Tortoni, a small portrait of a patron in a Parisian café by Edouard Manet (1832- 1883). Calle draws her text from conversations with museum staff, whom she asked for memories of the stolen artwork. Together, their voices represent a collective attempt to create an “image” of the painting that may serve as a placeholder for the work itself.

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