James Turrell’s Skyspaces are known to immerse visitors in a subtle choreography of light, color, and sky. Next year, at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, the American artist will deliver his largest Skyspace in a museum setting. On June 19, 2026, the Danish museum will unveil As Seen Below – The Dome, and Aarhus, Denmark, will gain a new landmark set to converge art, architecture, and perception.
In the installation—housed within a dome measuring over 52 feet high and 130 feet across—visitors descend through a luminous underground corridor before entering the vast chamber. Above, a circular oculus frames the sky, while Turrell’s carefully calibrated lighting washes the dome in ever-shifting hues. Sunrise and sunset amplify this effect.
“With As Seen Below I shape the very experience of seeing, rather than simply delivering an image,” said Turrell. “The architecture brings the sky close, so you recognise that the act of looking is itself the work.”
Founded in 1859, ARoS is Denmark’s oldest public art museum outside Copenhagen and one of Northern Europe’s largest, welcoming over 624,000 visitors in 2023. As Seen Below crowns ARoS’s decade-long expansion to grow its campus, a vision dubbed “The Next Level.” Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (SHL) is helping the art institution to realize the project, which includes The Sailing Gallery, an underground exhibition space for large contemporary commissions, and Art Square, a permanent outdoor platform for public art opening alongside Turrell’s piece. Per the design by SHL, the Skyspace will be housed within a domed structure covered in grass, camouflaging it with the art museum’s landscape. Past Skyspaces by Turrell are similarly located inside other monumental architectural works, like the Keith House in Texas, Friends Seminary school in New York, and MoMA PS1.
“We are proud that our museum will be home to James Turrell’s most significant Skyspace to date—an extraordinary work that invites visitors to slow down, lift their gaze and experience light, time and space in deeply moving ways. This is not only a remarkable artwork for ARoS, but also a new cultural landmark for Aarhus,” said Rebecca Matthews, museum director of ARoS.
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