Terry Fugate-Wilcox, Touch Piece, 1970–present, Plexiglass, 48 x 72 in. (artwork © Terry Fugate-Wilcox)

Touch Piece is a thin sheet of Plexiglas hung in the artist’s lofts over the years, usually near the front door, and in Fulcrum Gallery, which he and his wife, Valerie Shakespeare, operated in SoHo from 1993 to 2002. Guests at their many dinner parties could not enter or leave until they pressed their hand onto the acrylic sheet, leaving behind oily fingerprints, perspiration, and other biological residue. Touch Piece was allegedly never cleaned and thus contained the traces of hundreds of people who had visited the couple.