James Turrell Exhibitions on View Coast to Coast Summer 2013
A Three-Museum Celebration of the Artist’s Career

What
In May and June 2013, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York concurrently present three separate exhibitions highlighting the achievements of seminal American artist James Turrell (b. 1943), best known for his large-scale light installations. Independently curated by each presenting institution, the three simultaneous and complementary exhibitions together offer a full sense of Turrell’s oeuvre, and explore different facets of his five-decade career. Audiences at all three exhibitions will be able to see and experience an unprecedented range of his work—from a retrospective in Los Angeles, to work from the extensive permanent collection and commissions in Houston, to a monumental site-specific installation in New York.

Where
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
James Turrell: A Retrospective
May 26, 2013—April 6, 2014
LACMA presents the first major retrospective survey of the work of James Turrell. Curated by Michael Govan, LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director and CEO, and Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, James Turrell: A Retrospective gathers approximately fifty works spanning nearly five decades in one of the most complete overviews of his career to date. The exhibition comprises his early geometric light projections, prints and drawings, installations exploring sensory deprivation and seemingly unmodulated fields of colored light, and recent two-dimensional holograms. A section is also devoted to Turrell’s masterwork in process, Roden Crater, a site-specific intervention into the landscape just outside Flagstaff, Arizona, which is presented through models, plans, photographs, and films. Following its run at LACMA, James Turrell: A Retrospective travels to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (June 1-October 18, 2014) and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (December 2014-April 2015).

THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON
James Turrell: The Light Inside
June 9—September 22, 2013
Titled after the museum’s iconic James Turrell permanent installation The Light Inside (1999), and centered on the extraordinary collection of additional work by the artist at the MFAH, the Houston exhibition makes several of the artist’s installations accessible to the public for the first time. This survey of seven installations allows visitors to test the limits of their perception, and witness how light shapes space. Additionally, the artist’s Mapping Spaces portfolio and other works on paper related to Turrell’s epic Roden Crater project will be featured. The Houston presentation is curated by Alison de Lima Greene, MFAH curator of Contemporary Art and Special Projects.

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
James Turrell
June 21—September 25, 2013
James Turrell’s first exhibition in a New York museum since 1980 focuses on the artist’s groundbreaking explorations of perception, light, color, and space, with a special focus on the role of site-specificity in his practice. At its core is a major new project that recasts the Guggenheim rotunda as an enormous volume filled with shifting natural and artificial light. One of the most dramatic transformations of the museum ever conceived, this work will propose an entirely new experience of the building, reorienting visitors’ experiences of the rotunda from above to below. Other works from throughout Turrell’s career will be displayed in the museum’s Annex Level galleries, offering a complement and counterpoint to the new work in the rotunda. This exhibition is curated by Carmen Giménez, Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, and Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

JAMES TURRELL BIOGRAPHY
Born in Los Angeles in 1943 to a Quaker mother and father who was a school administrator, Turrell attended Pomona College, where his studies concentrated on psychology and mathematics. In 1973 he received a Master's degree in Art from Claremont Graduate School. His work is represented in numerous public collections including the Tate Modern, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The James Turrell Museum opened in Colomé, Argentina in 2009. His solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1976); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1980); Israel Museum (1982); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1984); MAK, Vienna (1998–99); Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2002–03); and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2009–10).

PRESS CONTACTS
LACMA
Miranda Carroll | Communications Director | 323 857-6543 | mcarroll@lacma.org
Stephanie Sykes | Communications Manager | 323 932-5883 | ssykes@lacma.org

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Mary Haus | Marketing and Communications Director | 713 639-7712 | mhaus@mfah.org
Amy Lowman | Publicist | 713 639-7516 | alowman@mfah.org

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Betsy Ennis | Director of Media and Public Relations | 212 423-3840 | pressoffice@guggenheim.org
Keri Murawski | Senior Publicist | 212 423-3840 | pressoffice@guggenheim.org

CREDITS AND NOTES TO EDITORS
LACMA
Credit: James Turrell: A Retrospective is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
Major support is provided by Kayne Griffin Corcoran and the Kayne Foundation.
Generous funding is also provided by Shidan and Susanne Taslimi, Mehran and Laila Taslimi, and the Taslimi Foundation, Renvy Graves Pittman, Christie's and Vacheron Constantin. Additional underwriting by Pace Gallery, Suzanne Deal Booth and David G. Booth, Robert Tuttle and Maria Hummer-Tuttle, Gagosian Gallery, and Violet Spitzer-Lucas and the Spitzer Family Foundation, along with Mark and Lauren Booth, James Corcoran and Tracy Lew, the Charles W. Engelhard Foundation, Pierre Lagrange and Roubi L’Roubi.
About LACMA: Since its inception in 1965, LACMA has been devoted to collecting works of art that span both history and geography-and represent Los Angeles's uniquely diverse population. Today, the museum features particularly strong collections of Asian, Latin American, European, and American art, as well as a contemporary art museum on its campus. With this expanded space for contemporary art, innovative collaborations with artists, and an ongoing Transformation project, LACMA is creating a truly modern lens through which to view its rich encyclopedic collection.
Location and contact: 5905 Wilshire Boulevard (at Fairfax Avenue), Los Angeles, CA, 90036 | 323 857-6000 | lacma.org

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH)
Credit: James Turrell: The Light Inside is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
Generous funding is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc. Additional support is provided by Leslie and Brad Bucher, Sara Paschall Dodd-Spickelmier, and Keith Spickelmier. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Isabel B. Wilson, Chairman Emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
About MFAH: Established in 1900, the MFAH is the oldest art museum in the region, with collections spanning antiquity to the present. The MFAH main campus comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 2000; the Caroline Wiess Law Building, designed by Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1958, with an extension completed in 1974; and the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, designed by Isamu Noguchi and opened in 1986. The Beck and Law buildings are connected by the Wilson Tunnel, which features James Turrell’s iconic installation The Light Inside (1999). Additional spaces include a repertory cinema, two libraries, public archives and a conservation and storage facility. Nearby, two house museums—Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens and Rienzi—present American and European decorative arts. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art—its acclaimed Core post-graduate residency program and Junior and Studio Schools—and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.
Location and Contact: 1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005 | 713 639-7300 | mfah.org

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Credit: James Turrell is organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Leadership Committee for James Turrell is gratefully acknowledged for its support.
About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The Guggenheim network that began in the 1970s when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, was joined by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, expanded to include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao which opened in 1997, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, currently in development. Looking to the future, the Guggenheim Foundation continues to forge international collaborations that take contemporary art, architecture, and design beyond the walls of the museum. More information about the foundation can be found at guggenheim.org.
Location and Contact: 1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street), New York, NY 10128 | 212 423-3618 | www.guggenheim.org