This August and September, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will offer four evenings of member-exclusive Quiet Views of James Turrell’s major new site-specific work Aten Reign (2013), which reimagines the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic building as one of Turrell’s luminous and immersive Skyspaces.
The events—taking place on August 12, August 19, September 9, and September 23—offer members an additional opportunity to experience Aten Reign in an intimate and meditative environment, with only sixty people present at each hour-long sitting. Two sittings will take place on each of the four evenings, the first starting at 7:30 pm and the second at 9 pm.
One of the largest installations the artist has mounted and the result of nearly six years of planning, Aten Reign materializes the light and the air that fill the expanse of the Guggenheim rotunda. For the first time, the rotunda can be experienced only from below—not as an open void to be looked across, but as a mass of vibrant color that expands and contracts above the heads of visitors. The work promotes a state of contemplation in a communal viewing space, rekindling the museum’s founding identity as a “temple of spirit,” in the words of Hilla Rebay, the Guggenheim’s first director and a pioneer in the promotion of nonobjective art.
James Turrell is organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Leadership Committee for James Turrell is gratefully acknowledged for its generous support, including Lisa and Richard Baker, Pace Gallery, Almine Rech Gallery, Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, 425 Park Avenue/Simone and David W. Levinson, and those who wish to remain anonymous. Additional support is provided by the Affirmation Arts Fund.
Tickets are exclusively for members, cost $15, and may be purchased through the Guggenheim Box Office at 212 423 3587 or [email protected]. There are two hour-long sittings each evening: 7:30–8:30 pm and 9–10 pm. For more information, please visit guggenheim.org/quietviews.