James Turrell’s largest ever Skyspace now open at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark

Today, As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell, the highly anticipated permanent installation by James Turrell, opens at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, ahead of the summer solstice. As Seen Below is the artist’s largest Skyspace installed within a museum context, marking a significant milestone in both the artist’s long and storied career and in the museum’s history.

“This is a transformative moment for ARoS. With As Seen Below, we are not only presenting a landmark installation by one of the most important artists of our time, but also creating a place of wonder, reflection, and connection. This remarkable work invites us to slow down, look anew, and experience our relationship with the world around us in a profoundly different way,” says Rebecca Matthews, Museum Director and CEO of ARoS, adding:

"It is an extraordinary privilege to work alongside James Turrell and help realise his singular artistic vision – a vision that has inspired and challenged the way we experience light, space, and perception for more than five decades.”

Measuring 16 metres in height and 40 metres in diameter, As Seen Below marks Turrell’s 100th and most ambitious Skyspace to date. Comparable in scale and monumentality to the Pantheon in Rome, the work is a significant addition to the ARoS collection, reinforcing the museum’s position as one of the world’s leading venues for installation art.

Visitors can now enter the spectacular artwork through an underground corridor before emerging into the vast indoor domed space. Turrell’s distinctive lighting washes the entire domed space and frames the endless sky, seen through the large central aperture above.

“As Seen Below offers a collective experience driven by light and the poetry of seasons to emphasise our relationship to nature, the sky, and our shared planet,” says James Turrell.

A lifetime of working with light

Widely recognised as one of the most significant contemporary artists of our time, James Turrell has spent more than five decades pushing the boundaries of perception through a practice centred on the materiality of light. His hugely popular Skyspace installations are monumental works of art and architecture, each featuring a large aperture in the ceiling that frames the open sky. Carefully designed to foster quiet contemplation, these unique environments invite viewers to experience the shifting colours and qualities of natural light. Today, his Skyspaces can be found around the world, inviting visitors to slow down and sense the world anew.

“It has been an ambitious undertaking to establish As Seen Below, and we are incredibly proud of the result — a world-class work of culture and architecture. The opening strengthens Aarhus as an international cultural destination and highlights the city’s ability to think big through collaboration. Thanks to everyone involved and to the generous donations that made this fantastic new artwork possible,” says Anders Winnerskjold, Mayor of Aarhus.

The opening completes a major expansion of ARoS, developed in collaboration with architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Aarhus Municipality. The project includes The Salling Gallery – a pioneering subterranean exhibition space dedicated to annual contemporary art commissions, which opened in June 2025 – and the ARoS Art Square, a new permanent outdoor space for art presentations.

"This is a giant leap for Aarhus. Not only has our city been enriched by an unique artwork and a cultural masterpiece. The citizens, the tourists, and our trade and commerce will benefit enormously from As Seen Below. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to James Turell, the patrons and the skilled craftsmen who have created the Skyspace," says Jesper Kjeldsen, Cultural Mayor of Aarhus.

The project has been realised with generous support from the Salling Foundations, the New Carlsberg Foundation, Aarhus Municipality, ARoS, and a private anonymous donation.

“We are proud to support As Seen Below, which uniquely brings together art, architecture, and the visitor experience. It is a world-class work of art that both the people of Aarhus and visitors from around the world can look forward to experiencing,” says Karin Salling, Deputy Chair of the Salling Foundations.

"The Board of the New Carlsberg Foundation is honoured to have supported the realization of As Seen Below, a spatial work of art and architecture that now presents ARoS with a significant new attraction of international standard. James Turrell has created an exceptional artwork that will undoubtedly be visited by many people from Denmark and abroad. Congratulations to ARoS on this magnificent monument,” says Sanne Kofod Olsen, Chair of the New Carlsberg Foundation.

How to experience As Seen Below

The installation can be experienced in three different modes. In Open Sky mode, the great domed chamber appears limitless with an open view of the sky. The ceiling’s circular opening frames the visible sky and turns it into a living canvas that is constantly changing. The space removes familiar points of reference, allowing the sky to appear as a pure field of colour, intense and immediate. This is typically how you will encounter the work upon arrival. From June 20, you can experience Open Sky during ARoS’ opening hours.

In Colour Shift, the opening to the sky is sealed, transforming the nature of the experience. Here, it is no longer the sky that takes centre stage, but light and colour. Our attention focuses on the space itself: walls dissolve into light, and the space appears to shift. Here, light is revealed as something tangible – not merely as illumination, but as a material that both shapes and permeates the space around you. From June 20, you can experience Colour Shift every hour during the museum’s opening hours.

During the transition between day and night, you can experience special Twilight sessions. Here, the aperture is open to the sky, and the light within the Skyspace gradually changes colour in harmony with the sun rising or setting. As Turrell shapes the context of vision through shifting hues inside the Skyspace, the colour of the sky seemingly changes with them, moment by moment. As he says, “I can change the sky to any colour you want.” Here, light shapes how you see, forging a direct connection between the dome, the visitor’s gaze, and the sky above.

Twilight sessions at sunrise and sunset are now available to book on selected days.

Press photos can be downloaded via Dropbox and may be used freely with proper credit.

For further information, please contact:

kitty@sam-talbot.com
+44 (0) 7514 803 577

For booking information:
aros.dk/en/skyspace

About James Turrell

James Turrell was born in Los Angeles in 1943, and his fascination with light began early, partly inspired by his upbringing in a Quaker family where silence and contemplation played a central role.

As a young man, Turrell became a licensed pilot and spent significant time in the air, captivated by light, the colours of the sky, and the nature of perception. He has described flying as a meditative experience - being absorbed by the sky and its vastness - and observing how light and colour change with altitude, time of day, and weather conditions.

Turrell is trained in art and the psychology of perception, and in the 1960s he became part of the Light and Space movement, where he found his calling in creating experiences that reshape the way we see and feel light.

While the Skyspaces are his best-known works, Roden Crater, an unprecedented large-scale artwork created within a volcanic cinder cone located in the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona, is Turrell’s magnum opus, and his life-long project. A gateway to the contemplation of light, time and landscape nearly five decades in the making, development on Roden Crater is ongoing. Once completed, the project is intended to last for centuries to come.

James Turrell has exhibited widely, and his work is held in major collections internationally.

About ARoS

ARoS is an international art museum located in Aarhus, Denmark. With six galleries and an entire floor dedicated to transformative installations, ARoS offers an important space for recalibrating the past, negotiating the present, and imagining the future through art.

ARoS’ collection contains more than 8,300 works including masterpieces by Danish and international artists. The collection features iconic installations such as Olafur Eliasson’s Your rainbow panorama (2011) and Ron Mueck’s oversized sculpture Boy (1999). From today, visitors can also experience the installation As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell; the artist's most ambitious Skyspace to date. The groundbreaking installation reinforces ARoS' position as one of the world's leading museums for installation.

Each year, ARoS hosts six to eight major exhibitions alongside a rich public engagement programme. Its bold, inclusive, and international outlook has led to groundbreaking exhibitions featuring artists like J.M.W. Turner, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Franciska Clausen, Salvador Dalì, Asger Jorn, Per Kirkeby, Barbara Kruger, Isaac Julien, Jenny Holzer, Bill Viola, Isaac Julien, Cindy Sherman, Mariko Mori, Sarah Sze and many more. More than 650,000 visitors come to ARoS annually.