Ago/Anon
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
1990
Materials & Dimensions:
Black screen cloth, flax paper, wood, aluminum, sand, stone, silver mylar, architectural ornament, paint, chalk, light
Total dimensions: 23 ½ feet high x 60 feet wide x 80 feet deep
Central column: 23 feet high x 16 feet diameter; inner cylinder: 6 feet diameter
Flax paper columns: 19 ½ feet high x 8 feet base diameter, and 5 feet top diameter
The site was the then Grand Lobby of the Brooklyn Museum.
On the back wall of the lobby I drew a three-legged spiral, overlapping a two-legged one, to reveal a pattern of points common to both. They made the abstract plan that describes a pattern of plant growth called phylotaxis. This drawing was the same diameter—sixteen feet---as the middle black double screen column with its center floor of silver mylar and its ring floor of raked sand. This central column had a ceiling light that was reflected by the silver floor to cast a circle of light on the ceiling above the column. Two existing columns in the lobby I sponged with translucent terra cotta stain and sheathed with columnar wood frameworks with a taut skin of flax paper. This skin was opaque from the outside but translucent from within. It resonated with the ambient sound so that to touch it was to feel the sound. In the framework, behind the existing columns, so that they only became visible when the frameworks were entered, were two stone heads, mounted eight feet above the floor, one per column. They came from the museum’s architectural ornament collection. One was red sandstone, of a woman. The other was blackened limestone, of a cloistered man.