Good Morning!
- The largest James Turrell Skyspace made for a museum will open at Denmark’s ARoS Aarhus Art Museum.
- A 236-foot superyacht is debuting a traveling, “museum-grade” exhibition for exclusive guests, starting in Monaco.
- Abram Champanier’s New Deal mural, restored and reunited, will go on view at the Museum of the City of New York.
The Headlines
SEEING (AND PAINTING) THE LIGHT. James Turrell is debuting his largest Skyspace to date in a museum setting, at Denmark’s ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, opening June 19, according to the Financial Times. “I always wanted people to value light,” said the American artist, who uses light and color as his media, often shifting the viewer’s sense of orientation. “In art, people — particularly collectors — are always looking for treasure. That’s why painting still holds force, though we’ve gone forward in the world. And I paint with light. I use light to work the medium of perception,” he said. Turrell has been making Skyspaces — rooms with a hole cut into the ceiling, exposing the sky — since 1974. This latest, and largest, iteration for a museum is titled As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace. And if, like the FT reporter, you are wondering whether Turrell has a favorite color, that’s “like asking who’s your favorite child,” the artist said. “Even if you have one, you don’t tell people about it.” The piece also features personal anecdotes from figures including LACMA director Michael Govanand artist and stage designer Es Devlin about their encounters with Turrell’s work.
TESTING THE WATERS. We had The Love Boat, and now we have the Floating Art Hotel. That is what a 236-foot superyacht is calling itself, by virtue of a hyper-exclusive, “museum-grade” exhibition it is hosting, titled “States of Motion,” featuring the likes of Marina Abramović andShirin Neshat, reports ARTnews’ Brian Boucher. To get in, one needs to reserve a suiteand get to the port facing the Monte Carlo casino in Monaco Bay by June 8, to catch the maiden voyage, conceived as a “traveling private members’ club at sea.” From there, an itinerary takes passengers to Miami, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi, in five-star-hospitality style—which includes a “curated” (just like the art!) wellness program, per organizers. By preview day on Thursday, the 14 available private suites were at 80 percent capacity, and pricing information has not been disclosed. After all, this is a “strictly curated” affair.
The Digest
Abram Champanier‘s New Deal mural—commissioned by the Federal Art Project and featuring Lewis Carroll’s Alice adventuring through New York City—has been restored and goes on display at the Museum of the City of New York tomorrow. [New York Times]
The French city of Bordeaux has refused to accept a donation of African art left to the city’s Musée d’Aquitaine by a deceased local, after officials deemed the artifacts should be returned to their countries of origin, notably Gabon. [Libération]
London’s Jewish Museum will open an interim exhibition and collection space called “Two Rooms,” in Hampstead, north London, from June 18 to Oct. 18, while the institution searches for a new permanent home.[press release]
Cecilia Alemani has been selected to curate the 15th Taipei Biennialin 2027. [Artforum]
The Kicker
TAKE A DEEP BREATH. French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière wants “people to get all the way back to the beginning of the earth,” he told the Guardian. He spoke at a preview of his new permanent installation at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania. Titled Breathe, the artwork invites visitors, one by one, to become the first living beings to inhale “pure,” 2.4-billion-year-old oxygen. The oxygen is extracted from iron ore dating back to the Paleoproterozoic era, when oxygen first began to enter the Earth’s atmosphere—making it, as Charrière puts it, as pollution-free as it gets. It is then released into a vault-like room in the bowels of Mona, where visitors are ushered in alone and may experience a connection “to the beginning of life on earth,” per the artist. This, he explains, makes them “a small part of this installation,” and of the oxygen cycle. The same oxygen, he adds, will be released only after the visitor dies. The installation coincides with Charrière’s major exhibition, “Hard Core,” opening tomorrow and running through March 29, 2027. Each of the featured artworks is “trying to bring deep time into the realm of human experience,” Charrière said. “You can actually sense what is normally [beyond] what our senses are able to grasp.”
