Here Lyeth: Grave Rubbings by Ann Parker and Avon Neal offers a fascinating look at a mid-20th-century project to preserve early American gravestone art through the practice of grave rubbing. Featuring original rubbings by photographer Ann Parker and multimedia artist Avon Neal, this exhibition highlights an artistic tradition that is both historically grounded and visually striking.

Drawn entirely from the Carter’s collection, Here Lyeth presents a remarkable body of work created during the couple’s Ford Foundation-supported travels throughout New England in the 1960s. Working collaboratively, Parker and Neal visited colonial-era burial grounds to record carved imagery that was rapidly deteriorating from age and exposure. Fastening rice paper to the stone slabs and rubbing the surfaces with wax crayons, the artists preserved an extraordinary visual language of death in early America. The resulting rubbings capture expressive motifs and symbols that illuminate changing beliefs about life, remembrance, and the afterlife in the early years of our nation.