Illumination by James Turrell

Acclaimed light sculptor and innovative installation artist James Turrell has completed a new work of art commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum. The artist’s exploration of the relationship between light and space continues, creating glowing fields of light. This commission of James Turrell’s work is the first such light installation in the mid-Atlantic region.

Noted for his work with light, Turrell has created an installation that combines analog and digital technology for slowly changing, shimmering, colored fields of light in the Museum’s three-arched south entrance, the windows of the original 1938 building, and in the clerestories of the Museum’s East Wing. This installation will illuminate the Museum during dusk and dawn.

A student of perceptual psychology and other scientific disciplines including mathematics, geology and astronomy, Turrell also studied in an experimental program at the University of California at Irvine that combined art and technology. He began his exploration of the relationship between light and space in the 1960s. His Quaker background was also a source of inspiration, with its emphasis on silent access to the “light within.” As a young child, Turrell was urged by his grandmother to “go inside and greet the light” at Quaker meetings.

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In the 1970s, Turrell spent hundreds of hours flying over America searching for the ideal location for an ambitious long-term project. After scanning the countryside he discovered the San Francisco range of extinct volcano cones in northwest Arizona. He purchased Roden Crater—an inactive volcano situated on the southeastern edge of the Painted Desert—and in 1979 began transforming the crater into a large-scale work of art.

James Turrell has exhibited in major museums and institutions around the world, and collectors have commissioned original installations. He was made a Chevalier des l’Order des Arts et des Lettres (a significant honor for a non-French artist) by the Académie française at the opening of a major installation of his work in Poitiers. Recent exhibitions of his work have been presented in Vienna, Paris, Houston, Seattle and New York.