James Turrell’s Skyspace

The James Turrell Skyspace is located on the third floor of the Student Activity Center at the University of Texas, Austin! Try to make a reservation in advance online (usually gets booked up) and go during or around an hour before sunset. Plan on staying for at least ~45mins for the best experience and watch how the lighting inside the dome changes in coordination to the sky and the setting sun. Some people even bring blankets so they can lay on the floor and watch the sky. Definitely recommend this to Turrell fans :)

You’re not spoiled for sunset opportunities in this town, and after hard thought I drove to the Student Activity Center at UT. The artist James Turrell built a dome called Skyspace, a small structure with a Pantheonish oval at the top from which one peers at the sky above. The dome itself is enhanced with LEDs that change color in reaction to the color of the sky, so at sunset you get a virtual Crayola box of colors blending in and out of the view. It’s a piece that requires patience, but it is rewarding and fascinating — at times you feel like you’re looking at a painting only to notice moving elements catching your eye, and sometimes the dome colors deepen so much that you feel everything is blurring. Imagine a 3-​D Rothko painting. I stayed 75 minutes (easy to note, via the bell tower ringing on the quarters), longer than most (longer than everyone else, actually) but it was something to go from a cyan sky with a purple dome to a black sky with white dome. I love bats, but this was where I needed to be tonight.