Lynne Yamamoto’s spectral installation of suspended children’s christening gowns along the Large Gallery’s east end permeates the height and grandeur of the surrounding space with ominous implications for historical evidence. In Inheritance, Yamamoto’s placement of dried moths, a selection originating from West Africa, within the hollow shell of each starched, moth-eaten gown completes a nesting pattern suggesting enduring connections between the elaborate homes along the Hudson River and the region’s role in the most notorious of trades. Questioning the ambiguous role of religious doctrine on notions of human bondage, Yamamoto extracts a cryptic message from the past: "… for the sake of that which ye have unlawfully gotten; it will be a moth in your estates which will certainly eat them up, either in your own, or your children's time.” (Sermon, William Beveridge, 18th c.). Inheritance provides our passage through the darkest days of the year illuminated by the artist’s examination of collective history. Like a tapestry conservator, Yamamoto’s exacting gaze retrieves hidden or broken threads from within the fabric of our social consciousness, extracting them for deeper clarification before carefully weaving them back into place in the restorative act of mending our fractured past.