james turrell’s largest-ever museum skyspace at ARoS photographed by danica o. kus
James Turrell brings the sky below ground in Aarhus
In Aarhus, Denmark, a low circular mound now rises beside ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, its grass-covered dome cut by a dark oculus that turns the Danish sky into part of the museum’s collection. Inside it sits As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell, a permanent light installation that opened in January 2026 ahead of the museum’s opening in time for the summer solstice in June 2026, drawing visitors beneath the museum grounds before lifting their gaze toward the sky.
The work marks Turrell’s 100th Skyspace and his largest ever installed within a museum context. At sixteen meters (52 feet) high and forty meters (130 feet) in diameter, the domed chamber gives ARoS a new subterranean room for light, perception, and weather, while extending a campus already shaped by large-scale installation art, including Olafur Eliasson’s Your rainbow panorama above the museum roof.
Photographer Danica O. Kus experienced the space — ahead of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum’s public opening on June 19th, 2026 — to document its immersive and otherworldly atmosphere.
from above, the grass-covered dome sits beside the museum | images © Danica O. Kus
entering through the earth
Visitors reach James Turrell’s Skyspace at ARoS through an underground corridor, moving away from the city surface before arriving inside the circular chamber. The approach is part of the work’s logic. The artist has described As Seen Below as an experience of consciously entering the earth and emerging in the heavens, and that movement gives the installation its physical rhythm before the light even begins to shift.
Within the dome, a large circular aperture frames the open sky. The space holds few visual cues, so the eye settles on color, scale, and the changing edge between architecture and atmosphere.
‘The architecture brings the sky close, so you realize that the very act of seeing is the artwork itself,‘ Turrell says, giving a simple description of a work that depends on the viewer’s own act of looking.
As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell opens at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum
light as material
The installation operates through several modes. In Open Sky, the oculus remains open and the ceiling frames the sky as a changing field of color during museum hours. In Colour Shift, the aperture closes and the chamber becomes a fully interior environment, with light washing across the walls until the dome seems to lose its fixed surface.
During Twilight sessions at sunrise and sunset, artificial color moves with the changing daylight, making the sky appear to respond from above.
Turrell’s long practice has often returned to that unstable edge between what is present and what is perceived. Trained in art and the psychology of perception, and long associated with the Light and Space movement, the artist has spent more than five decades treating light as something to occupy, feel, and question.
‘I work with light to shape how we perceive,‘ the artist continues, a line that lands especially directly inside the Aarhus dome.
visitors enter the permanent installation through an underground corridor
a new layer for ARoS
The opening completes a major expansion of ARoS developed with Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Aarhus Municipality.
Alongside the Skyspace, the project includes The Salling Gallery, a subterranean exhibition space for annual contemporary art commissions that opened in 2025, and ARoS Art Square, a permanent outdoor space for art presentations. Funding came from the Salling Foundations, the New Carlsberg Foundation, Aarhus Municipality, ARoS, and a private anonymous donor.
Seen from above, the new work appears as a circular form set into the museum grounds, sitting near the red-brick body of ARoS and the elevated ring of Your rainbow panorama. The relationship is direct without feeling repetitive. Eliasson’s walkway colors the city from the roofline, while Turrell’s dome pulls visitors below grade and asks them to look upward from a place apart.
the 40-meter-wide dome frames the sky through a circular aperture above
Turrell’s lighting shifts across the chamber during Open Sky, Colour Shift, and Twilight sessions
the Skyspace forms part of a major ARoS expansion with Schmidt Hammer Lassen
the work marks Turrell’s 100th Skyspace and his largest within a museum context
the chamber changes with daylight, weather, and the viewer’s own perception
project info:
name: ARoS Skyspace
artist: James Turrell | @jamesturell
location: Aarhus, Denmark
museum: ARoS Aarhus Art Museum
photography: © Danica O. Kus | @danica_o_kus_photography
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