Kiki Smith uses her multidisciplinary practice to examine and comment on aesthetic renderings of the human body, particularly the female form. "Near," a suspended sculptural work, depicts two female figures framed by a kitelike geometric structure, placed within a field of floating glass teardrops. The site-specific work, commissioned in 2005 by the Fine Arts Museums for the opening of the new de Young building, contains several compositional elements that directly allude to San Francisco. The delicate, hazy teardrops hang from the ceiling—a reference to the city’s infamously foggy weather. And although composed of cast aluminum, which recalls the copper exterior of the de Young, the metal structure closely resembles a cardboard box, a reminder of San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.

"Near" is a direct reinterpretation of David, Joanna, and Abigail Mason (1670, pl. 107), a portrait in the Museums’ permanent collection that is attributed to the Freake-Gibbs painter. The replicated figures of Joanna and Abigail Mason, gilt in copper leaf, represent female forms elevated to the status of religious icons. By focusing on the two girls and excluding their brother from the work, Smith inverts the pervasive gender bias that has methodically erased women from the annals of history (Burgard 2005–2006, 14). [Janna Keegan and Jaushua Rombaoa, de Young 125]