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James Turrell's site-specific installation Meeting at MoMA PS1 will re-open on October 8 after a three-year restoration and renovation. One of Turrell's celebrated Skyspaces, Meeting is an installation inside the museum that invites viewers to gaze upwards toward an unobstructed view of the sky. The only public James Turrell Skyspace in the New York area, Meeting is also the first Skyspace that Turrell created in the United States and just the second ever made.
The restoration and renovation, undertaken with the close involvement of the artist, includes a new lighting program at sunrise and sunset that employs modulated colored light. This is produced by energy-saving LED fixtures that, as in other more recent Turrell works, are controlled by a computer program that automatically adjusts the timing of the sequence to the setting of the sun as it shifts throughout the year. In its renovated form, the space is capable of producing both the multi-colored interior lighting of the new program as well as the static yellow tones emitted by the original tungsten bulbs. In addition, the project has repaired weather deterioration around the oculus, as well as components of the mechanical roof that covers the work when it is not open. Turrell also designed new, more durable teak wood seating.
In celebration of the re-opening, MoMA PS1 will host 20 special after-hours sunset viewings between October 8 and November 5-after which the new sunset lighting program will fall within regular museum hours into the spring. Tickets to these viewings will be free and available to the public on Friday, October 7. Meeting will also be open to the public during regular MoMA PS1 museum hours. Visithttp://mo.ma/turrell for more information.
"One of Turrell's first Skyspaces, Meeting is an urban site, a destination for the public, and an inspiring point of departure for generations of artists. We are pleased to bring this important work back on view in a new, 21st century iteration that adds a dynamic lighting program, allowing the artist to realize more dramatic effects against the sky's atmospheric light," said Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art. "Meeting was originally commissioned in 1976, our founding year. Now, in honor of MoMA PS1's 40th anniversary, and through the generosity of Mark and Lauren Booth, we are re-opening the installation and welcoming it into the collection of The Museum of Modern Art."
"Meeting opened the museum to the city. In cutting a hole through the roof, Turrell used the building to reframe a familiar subject-the sky over our heads-creating a serene space in which we can contemplate our relationship to the world." added Peter Eleey, Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs, MoMA PS1. "The new lighting programs he has added focus our awareness on the moments when the sky is most expressive, as it transitions between day and night."
Originally commissioned in 1976 by P.S.1 founder Alanna Heiss for the museum's inaugural exhibition, the work was not realized until 1980. Turrell continued to make modifications through 1986, and it became a prototype for the many subsequent Skyspaces he would create over the following decades.
In concert with the restoration project, The Museum of Modern Art has acquiredMeeting as a gift of Mark and Lauren Booth in honor of the 40th anniversary of MoMA PS1. Mark and Lauren Booth also provided major support for the restoration and renovation of the installation.James Turrell (American, b. 1943) creates works of art that consist primarily of light, exploring fundamental questions about the nature of human perception by rendering tangible the act of vision. A key representative of the "Light and Space" movement centered in Los Angeles during the 1960s, Turrell began making cuts in the walls of his studio during this time, allowing exterior light to enter in carefully controlled ways. In 1974-5, he created a permanent cut in the architecture of Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo's home in Varese, Italy, puncturing the ceiling with a rectangular aperture that opened directly onto the sky overhead. This became the first of what the artist now calls "Skyspaces," carefully designed rooms or freestanding pavilions with precise overhead cuts that open onto unobstructed views of the sky. Turrell has exhibited his work extensively, including major surveys at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in 2013-14.
