Outside, the Danish evening sky was a mottled gray. But to the viewers gazing up through the opening inside the huge dome that is the American artist James Turrell\u2019s latest creation, the sky was a flat circle of pure color that morphed seamlessly from cobalt blue to teal green, to a yolk-like yellow and back to blue. With each cycle, the colors grew subtly deeper, gradually reaching an intensity that compelled several visitors to lie down directly below the aperture, as if waiting for the mothership to beam them home.<\/p>\n
Such is the power of \u201cAs Seen Below \u2014 The Dome,\u201d the 100th \u201cskyspace\u201d enclosure with a sky-framing opening that Turrell has built around the world \u2014 in museums, public buildings, private homes and even a dormant volcano<\/a>. This iteration, which he created for the permanent collection of the ARoS museum in Aarhus, Denmark<\/a>, where it opens Friday, is the largest in a museum setting. It is also, as Turrell explained in a phone interview from his home in Flagstaff, Ariz., his most ambitious.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the context of the skyspaces, I always wanted to enter Earth and emerge in the heavens,\u201d the artist said. \u201cThis one does that.\u201d<\/p>\n To enter \u201cAs Seen Below,\u201d you travel through a curving passage that leads from the museum\u2019s main building to an underground circular chamber that\u2019s capped with a dome about 130 feet in diameter. At its center is an \u201coculus\u201d whose vanishingly fine edge creates the impression that the sky is a flat membrane stretched over the opening.<\/p>\n Over 1,100 artificial lights hidden in the room combine with natural light and the peculiar physics of the human eye to create an installation that plays with perception and demonstrates that light, as Turrell is fond of saying, is not something that reveals, but is itself the revelation.<\/p>\n Turrell, whose work has been influenced by the Nordic artists Lars Hertervig and Thomas Wilfred, said that he was drawn to the region because of its relationship with light. \u201cIt does intrigue me that in Denmark, where you have the long winters, in terms of light there\u2019s often very little of it,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are people that seem to treasure light the most.\u201d<\/p>\n But the complexities of the site-specific installation meant that it took 12 years to become reality. Because the installation\u2019s dome extends above ground in a public park, the permit process was lengthy. Unfeasible costs compelled Turrell to abandon his original plan to create an entire sphere underground. Even as a dome, the size \u2014 about one yard wider than the Pantheon\u2019s \u2014 presented significant technical challenges.<\/p>\n Engineers used a technique not previously used at this scale, molding 40 sheets of fiberglass, each about 72 feet long, into a cupola shell whose interior had to be sanded smooth by hand to avoid any seams. The shell\u2019s exterior was then covered with concrete, and \u2014 because it is visible as a mound above ground \u2014 laid with soil and grass. Partway through the process, Turrell decided to include a retractable lid that closes the aperture.<\/p>\n The 19-ton lid is almost 1,000 square feet in size and has to slide soundlessly on rails, \u201cso there\u2019s a lot of ingenuity in the mechanics,\u201d said Jette Birkeskov Mogensen, the project director for Schmidt Hammer Lassen, the architecture firm that worked with Turrell.<\/p>\n The Museums Special Section<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t help that the company supplying the lid went bust in 2025, delaying the planned completion by a year.<\/p>\n