Doug Aitken’s LIGHTSCAPE and More Set for The Shed 2026 Summer Season

The Shed today has revealed a lineup of wide-ranging summer programs, all free and open to the public.

The summer features the New York premiere of Lightscape, a new immersive film-based installation by Doug Aitken, on view June 25 to September 13 in the Level 2 Gallery. Latinx Freedom, a nationwide public history initiative, will debut as an 18-foot public art installation celebrating the contributions of the Latinx community to the civil rights movement on The Shed’s outdoor Plaza, on view June 18 to August 20. As part of the fourth cohort of Open Call, The Shed’s commissioning program for early-career artists, four performance works by Nehprii Amenii, Avi Amon, James Caverly and Andrew Morrill, and Rudi Goblen will premiere in The Griffin Theater starting June 25.

These programs reflect The Shed’s commitment to commissioning and presenting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work for audiences of all interests, spanning visual art, music, dance, film, performance, public art, and collective history.

Lightscape

June 25 to September 13, 2026
Level 2 Gallery

Lightscape, a new large-scale, film-based installation by Doug Aitken, will transform The Shed’s 12,000-sq.-ft. Level 2 Gallery into an immersive seven-screen environment of dynamic images and sound.

Exploring individuality and connection in a world defined by constant transformation, the work blends music, film, and architecture into an expansive multisensory experience that plunges audiences into a contemporary portrait of the United States.

The installation follows multiple characters—played by Natasha Lyonne, Beck, members of the LA Dance Project, and more—moving through dramatic landscapes across America, from vast deserts and remote mountains to automated factories and digital environments. An existential high-rise sequence, urban dancers navigating mechanized factory spaces, a migrant worker racing across the desert, a cowboy forging his path—these individual journeys unfold in parallel, their seemingly separate narratives gradually intersecting.

With music at its core, Lightscape features a collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including original recordings—conducted by Gustavo Dudamel—of works by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Meredith Monk, alongside new scores by Beck, LA LOM, and Aitken.

Live improvised music performances will activate the installation throughout the summer, with a full schedule to be announced. Tickets will be available starting May 14 and are offered on a choose-what-you-pay basis.

Latinx Freedom

June 18 to  August 20, 2026
Plaza
On the outdoor Plaza, The Shed presents the inaugural exhibition of the Latinx Freedom Movement Archive and Exhibition Project, a nationwide public history initiative commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Through photography, text, and visual art, this monumental new 18-foot tall public art installation explores the history of Latinx civil rights movements, including the Young Lords, and highlights the pivotal role Latinx communities have played over the decades in shaping broader struggles for justice in the United States.

This exhibition is open to the public and free to attend with special activations throughout the summer.

Open Call

June 26 to July 25, 2026
The Griffin Theater
The Shed will produce and present four performance works developed by artists from the fourth cohort of Open Call, The Shed’s early-career commissioning program. Tickets to performances are free, and reservations will be available beginning in late May.

James Caverly and Andrew Morrill: Thank You Ryan for a Clean Microwave

June 26 and 27
James Caverly and Andrew Morrill’s sharp, funny, and fiercely humane chamber play flips between a Deaf-run coffee shop and a writer’s imagination as two internal narrators battle to shape a story about love, trauma, and who gets to tell whose truth. Thank You Ryan for a Clean Microwave embraces a bold, New Medium of storytelling, centering Deaf identity and infused with absurd realism. The production delves into the intricate dynamics of identity and communication within the Deaf community and includes signed and spoken languages with projected captions along with microwave choreography. With explosive comic set pieces, raw emotional reckonings, and a simmering scandal around a celebrity Deaf actor, it’s theatrical, urgent, and impossible to stop talking about.

Nehprii Amenii: HUMAN

July 10 and 11
Rooted in African diasporic storytelling traditions and the musical lineages of blues, jazz, and soul, HUMAN explores themes of connection, human rights, ancestral memory, climate, and collective responsibility and asks audiences to question what it really means to be human in a time of deep ethical fracture. Each performance is preceded by a free puppet-making workshop using upcycled materials, culminating in a short, audience-led procession into the theater, where these creations become part of the performance experience.

Avi Amon: MOTHER/ROAD

July 17 and 18
Part concept album, part memoir, part immersive concert, Avi Amon’s MOTHER/ROAD invites audiences to participate in an act of emotional memory. For this production, Amon creates a musical mediation on grief, memory, and family using cassette tapes carried by his parents when they immigrated to the United States from Istanbul in 1979. The piece explores the porous nature of time, how it fades and distorts, and how—like a cassette tape—it can rewind, warp, and overwrite itself. Out of the stuff of memory, music and sound compose new worlds at once fragile and infinite for the generations to inhabit together.

Rudi Goblen: FITO