James Turrell is an artist whose media are light and space, and for the last forty years he has been carefully sculpting the cinder cone of an extinct volcano near Flagstaff into one of the world’s largest and most important land based sculptures.

Turrell first studied psychology and mathematics before earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1966, the year that he first began experimenting with light projections as sculpture. In the 1970s he started building “skyspaces,” which feature openings cut into or constructed as part of roofs. These apertures, which make apparent the way color changes in the sky over time, are also designed to evoke a feeling in the viewer that the sky is close enough to touch. Turrell has been commissioned since then to install dozens of these architectural sculptures in museums across the United States and Europe, and as far away as Australia. He has also created skyspaces for many private clients, including the Louis Vuitton store in Las Vegas.

Turrell has received major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Bund Long Museum of Shanghai, among others. A museum devoted solely to his work opened in Argentina in 2009. He received a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1984, and the National Medal of Arts in 2013.

The photographs and archival materials on view in this exhibition are on loan from the Lannan Foundation. 

Sponsor

Louise A. Tarble Foundation

In 1931, a group of civic-minded citizens led by humanities professor and climate scientist Dr. James Church and local art collector Charles Cutts, established what is today known as the Nevada Museum of Art. Sixty years later, in 1993, a major endowment gift from the Carol Franc Buck Foundation established the Altered Landscape Photography Collection that is now one of the institution’s largest focused collecting areas with approximately 2,000 photographs. In these images, artists reveal the ways that individuals and industries have marked, mined, toured, tested, developed, occupied, and exploited landscapes over the last fifty years. While the image makers take various approaches, together they offer a panoramic sweep of the contentious social and political debates that have shaped contemporary discourse on the changing environment. Held in trust for future generations, an art museum’s permanent collection reflects the values and identity of the community it serves.

The photographs in this exhibition are hung on the walls in a manner known as “salon style.” The term refers to the centuries-old French tradition of displaying art in large, grand gallery spaces as a backdrop for conversation and dialogue. In private French homes, invited guests would gather in salons (or grand living rooms) to discuss art, history, politics, and other important matters of the day. Beginning in 1737, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris re-invented the idea of the salon when they opened their student exhibitions to the general public for the first time. Not only were all community members invited to attend salons, visitors were encouraged to debate and share opinions about the works on view—much like what happens in many art museums today.