With his exhibit entitled Aten Reign, James Turrell transformed the Guggenheim into a jaw-dropping, neck-craning, ever-shifting experience with light and space. Turrell re-sculpted the massive interior of the iconic rotunda with tiers of white fabric over unseen scaffolding. For this portion, the artist chose Newmat to provide 13,500 square feet of micro-perforated white matt membranes with built-in micro-perforated black matt black-out membranes. Newmat installed these membranes in fourteen segments, which include five large concentric oval sections in a conical shape. All membranes were installed onto a concealed structure built by the museum specifically for this project. Unsagging and seamless, the perfection of the Newmat material allows the physicality of the light to become the primary focus as both natural and LED lights shift from one color to the next at the speed of a sunset. Aten Reign is completely immersive, altering not just the six-story ceiling but also your entire perception of the world around you.
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