Walk of Modern Art
The Walk of Modern Art is a self-guided trail of 17 permanent public sculptures installed across Salzburg by the Salzburg Foundation since 2002.
Public Art
Sky Space
Snapshot
A permanent Sky Space installation by American artist James Turrell, built into the Mönchsberg rock adjacent to the Museum der Moderne Monchsberg in 2006. It is Walk of Modern Art number 4 and free to experience from the museum terrace.
The Story
James Turrell has built Sky Spaces in dozens of locations worldwide. The premise is consistent: an architectural chamber with a precisely shaped aperture cut through the ceiling, open directly to the sky. Visitors enter a dimly lit interior and look up. What they see is not quite the sky they expected.
The Salzburg version, officially titled “Blue Pearl - Skyspace,” is built into the Nagelfluh conglomerate of the Mönchsberg plateau. The elliptical chamber measures roughly 9 by 7 metres and about 8 metres high. The aperture is oval. Seating runs along the curved walls. Concealed lighting within the chamber responds to conditions outside, shifting in hue and intensity across the day. The result is that the sky seen through the opening reads differently from how it appears when you are standing in it: perceived colour deepens, distances flatten, and the sky seems to become a solid object, almost a painting, rather than an infinite space. The effect intensifies at dusk, when the shift from daylight to dark happens slowly enough to watch.
The installation was commissioned as part of the Salzburg Foundation’s ongoing Walk of Modern Art, a programme that has placed significant contemporary works on the city’s streets, hills, and public spaces since 2002. Turrell was a former pilot with a particular interest in aerial perception of light; the Mönchsberg plateau, elevated above the city and open to sky on all sides, was well suited to his concerns.
Entry is free. The space is accessible from the Museum der Moderne Monchsberg terrace during museum hours and for one hour after sunset, which is the recommended time to visit.
Visiting
- Access: Free; from Museum der Moderne Monchsberg terrace
- Hours: Tue-Sun 10am-6pm (Wed until 8pm); also one hour after sunset
- Getting there: Via Monchsberg Lift or on foot up the Mönchsberg
- Combine with: Museum der Moderne Monchsberg, Monchsberg Aussichtsterrasse
- Best time: Dusk, when the light transition through the aperture is most dramatic
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James Turrell
artistb. 1943
American artist who works exclusively with light and space. His Sky Space (2006) at the Museum der Moderne on Monchsberg is a permanent chamber with an elliptical aperture open to the sky, one of the few Turrell Sky Spaces permanently accessible to the public in a European museum.