james turrell installs his largest-ever skyspace at ARoS

james turrell completes his largest Skyspace in a museum context

James Turrell completes the permanent installation of As Seen Below—The Dome, a Skyspace at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, ahead of its public opening on June 19th, 2026. The work is the artist’s largest Skyspace realized within a museum context and marks the final phase of the major expansion project of the institution, The Next Level. Measuring 16 meters in height and 40 meters in diameter, the work reframes the experience of looking, turning the sky into a material presence shaped by architecture, time, and light.

‘With As Seen Below I’m shaping the experience of seeing rather than delivering an image. The architecture holds the sky close, so you recognise that the act of looking is the work itself. Here light isn’t description; it’s the substance you stand within. In this Skyspace the day has weight, the evening has temperature, and the change belongs to you.’ shares the artist.

James Turrell, As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell | images by Mads Smidstrup © ARoS, 2025. From James Turrells visit in As Seen Below, June 2025.

how ‘as Seen Below—The Dome, a Skyspace’ reshapes perception

For more than five decades, Turrell has built a practice around light and the proposition that it’s not merely something we see, but something we inhabit. His Skyspaces, architectural environments punctured by a ceiling aperture that frames the open sky, are among his most widely known works. They cultivate attentiveness, slowing the visitor’s body and senses down to meet the shifting conditions of natural light.

As Seen Below—The Dome, a Skyspace pushes this logic further than any of Turrell’s previous museum-based projects. Visitors enter the installation through an underground, light-filled corridor before arriving inside the vast domed chamber. From there, Turrell’s calibrated lighting washes across the interior surfaces, subtly modulating the way the sky is perceived through the central oculus.

Unlike many Skyspaces that function as solitary or intimate encounters, this work is conceived as a shared environment. The scale of the dome allows for a collective experience of light unfolding over time, emphasizing seasonal shifts and daily cycles. According to ARoS, the work is designed to foreground our relationship to nature, the sky, and the idea of a shared planet.

James Turrell completes the permanent installation of As Seen Below

completing the major expansion of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum

The opening of As Seen Below—The Dome, a Skyspace concludes The Next Level, ARoS’ multi-year expansion developed in collaboration with Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects. The project includes The Salling Gallery, a subterranean exhibition space dedicated to annual contemporary commissions, which opened in June 2025, as well as the Art Square, a permanent outdoor platform for art set to open in 2026. Turrell’s dome operates as the conceptual and spatial anchor of this transformation, integrating architecture, landscape, and perception into a single work.‘We are thrilled to announce that As Seen Below will open to the public in June 2026, in what promises to be a defining moment in the history of ARoS. We are proud that our museum will be home to the artist’s most significant Skyspace to date, an extraordinary work that invites visitors to slow down, look up, and experience light, time, and space in profoundly moving ways,’ shares Rebecca Matthews, Director of ARoS, framing the installation as a defining moment for the institution.

the work is the artist’s largest Skyspace realized within a museum context