ILLUMINATE SF

THREE GEMS

James Turrell (2005)

Permanent

Golden Gate Park: Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden, deYoung Museum (view map)

Created specifically for a site in the new de Young’s Osher Sculpture Garden. It is a subterranean installation that features a view of the sky altered by L.E.D. lighting effects, and that highlights changing light and weather conditions outside. Although Turrell has created other skyspaces, his project for the de Young is his first skyspace to adopt the stupa form. The sculpture is sited in a grass-covered hill in the Osher Sculpture Garden.Viewers walk through a short tunnel cut into the hill, and then enter into a cylindrical space carved out of the hill. The retaining walls of this cylindrical space are white concrete and the floor will be red stone. At the center of this cylindrical space is a rough-hewn, black basalt stupa form. Entering the round stupa through a door, viewers sit on a stone bench that runs around the circumference of the skyspace and view the sky through an oculus cut in the roof of the chamber. Viewers’ perceptions of the sky color are subtly altered by an L.E.D. lighting system inside the chamber, and by changing light and weather conditions outside the chamber.

Best Viewing: Anytime after dusk. Friday Nights through November 23.

Visit artist James Turrell's other artwork featured in Illuminate SF: Skygarden at 90 Seventh Street facing Mission Street.

Presenting Sponsor


5M is a new, vibrant mixed-use destination in the heart of San Francisco located at the intersection of 5th and Mission streets. Developed by Brookfield Properties, named “Developer of the Year” by the San Francisco Business Times in 2021, the four-acre parcel was previously home to parking lots and underutilized buildings. Now, it has been transformed into a lively community for locals and visitors alike.