# @rubinmuseum on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DDSKsP0t77T
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/29170611-rubinmuseum-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/dafae3a652.jpg
- **Posted:** 2024-12-07T16:28:38.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (@rubinmuseum) — https://gondola.cc/rubinmuseum

## Caption

In acknowledgment of National Letter Writing Day we're casting our minds back to Lee Mingwei's "The Letter Writing Project," which was in the exhibition Measure Your Existence at the Rubin Museum from February 7 to August 10, 2020.

After Lee's maternal grandmother passed away in the late 1990s, he wrote many letters to her as if she were still alive, sharing thoughts and emotions he had left too late to express. In The Letter Writing Project visitors were invited to sit in the booth and write a letter to a deceased or absent loved one, expressing feelings of forgiveness, apology, or gratitude. 

They were invited to leave the letter unsealed for other visitors to read, or seal the letter with an address for the Museum to post. Lee described The Letter Writing Project as a meaningful gift exchange between the visitor and the artist. Since the work debuted in 1998, the artist has collected over one hundred thousand letters, some unsealed and others sealed with no address. Lee plans to perform a fire ceremony to release the deep emotions written in the letters to the sky or water.

📸 David De Armas
______________
Lee Mingwei, Booth from "The Letter-Writing Project", 1998. Wood and glass, 113 1/2 × 67 1/4 × 91 in. (288.3 × 170.8 × 231.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist in honor of Flora Miller Biddle and purchase, with funds from Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Fund at the Communities Foundation of Texas 99.54a-n

#RubinMuseum #LeeMingwei #NationalLetterWritingDay

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rubinmuseum, nationalletterwritingday, leemingwei

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