- James Turrell, Dividing the Light (Pomona College Skyspace), 2007. (c) James Turrell, photo by Florian Holzherr
- Turrell’s Skyspace at Pomona College in California, Dividing the Light, bathed in violet light at night.
Through Mar. 25, the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota is offering visitors a chance at enlightenment: an early-evening computer-programmed light display called the Sunset Light Experience in its newly constructed Skyspace by artist James Turrell.
The hour-long program runs on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and begins at 5:30 p.m. As at other times during the day, visitors can enter the Skyspace — the museum’s Selby Courtyard, which has been transformed by Turrell and his team into a naked-eye observatory — and sit on benches made of reclaimed cypress to gaze at the sky overhead. During the Sunset Light Experience, color LEDs flood the Skyspace’s 24-foot-square aperture with light in shades of red, fuchsia, blue, violet, green and other colors. As a result, the sky visible through the aperture appears as a changing field of blue, black and other colors — an effect that should be dramatically heightened at sunset, when nature’s own light show will fuse with Turrell’s technicolor showcase.
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2012.