VertiGhost, a newly commissioned work by Lynn Hershman Leeson (American, b. 1941) for the Fine Arts Museums, draws the viewer into a meditation about notions of authenticity and the construction of identity. Inspired by the Legion of Honor’s role as a location for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), Hershman Leeson explores the tension between the pursuit of truth versus the difficulty or lack of desire to distinguish between reality and fiction.

The film at the core of Hershman Leeson’s VertiGhost project features the re-creation of select scenes from Vertigo, documentation of a painting by Amedeo Modigliani in the Museums’ collection that was enshrouded by questions of authenticity, as well as interviews about the construction of realities in life and art. The project also consists of an installation at both museum buildings and a web component that incorporates live footage of viewers from the Legion of Honor by digitally inserting and implicating them into the narrative.