Short Days Bring Rice a Twilight Epiphany: Sports Field’s Lights Interfering with Turrell Skyspace

by Bill Davenport October 7, 2012

The Rice University Thresher reports that the school’s new James Turrell Skyspace is having some unanticipated conflicts with other uses of the busy campus. Lighting for night-time games on the nearby intramural sports fields was spilling over into the artist’s carefully choreographed light show. Unlike the similar situation in Dallas, where the Nasher Sculpture Center’s Turrell Skyspace has been closed for lack of sky (a less-publicized side effect of the new Museum Tower next door), the university is scrambling to maintain harmony: busy adjusting the lighting fixtures, and sporting schedules and closing the Skyspace on Mondays and Wedmesdays to accomodate intramural sports matches.

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Rainey Knudson October 8, 2012 - 15:50

A modest proposal: they installed black weather balloons to block light for the inaugural gala of Turrell’s ziggurat — maybe make that a permanent campus fixture? Or get rid of intramural sports. Or better yet: just get rid of the students altogether. That would rid the campus of these pesky activities that distract from the unsullied sublime.

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