Water tank exterior, future site of James Turrell s Skyspace Will McLaughlin
More than three decades ago, the American artist James Turrell, a pioneer of the Light and Space movement, visited the vacant campus of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass Moca) in North Adams and envisioned how he would create a Skyspace there, one of his signature coloured chambers with apertures opened to the sky. The notion was to install it within a concrete water tank that had been used as an emergency fire extinguisher when the museum complex housed factory buildings.
Turrell’s vision will be finally realised this spring when the inoperative outdoor water tank, which has remained on site as Mass Moca developed, is transformed. The work will join the long-term exhibition of nine immersive works in a multi-decade retrospective devoted to Turrell at the museum titled