Professor Sarah Sze Commissioned to Create New Work for Storm King's Permanent Collection

Professor Sarah Sze has been commissioned to create a new, site-specific work for the permanent collection at Storm King Art Center.

Located in New York’s Hudson Valley, Storm King Art Center is a unique outdoor museum sprawling over 500 acres where visitors experience large-scale sculpture and site-specific commissions under open sky. Since 1960, Storm King has been dedicated to stewarding the hills, meadows, and forests of its site and surrounding landscape. Building on the visionary thinking of its founders, Storm King supports artists and some of their most ambitious works. 

Fallen Sky, envisioned and created by Sze, is Storm King’s latest commissioned artwork that will become a permanent fixture of its grounds. The work “is comprised of a deliberately incomplete and increasingly delicate 36-foot-diameter spherical cavity, sheathed in mirrored stainless steel.” The piece will be located in a previously unseen part of the center’s immense acreage. Sze chose the location in consultation with Storm King’s curators.

“Fallen Sky is cradled in the expansive landscape of Storm King,” Sze said in her artist’s statement. “Pressing into the earth, the concave sculpture reflects the concave sky, creating a sense of the landscape in reverse. As visitors peer into the reflection, they are immersed in the sky from above and below, teetering between a sense that the sculpture has dropped from above and a sense that it is emerging from the earth. Framed by the landscape, the work erases the land and gives form to the air, allowing an intimate view of what is normally vast and immeasurable.”

In addition to Fallen Sky, Sze has conceived of a temporary multimedia installation specifically for Storm King’s Museum Building. The installation, entitled Fifth Season, will be on view through November 8, 2021, and similarly “explores landscape as both idea and aesthetic practice, building on the artist’s ongoing preoccupation with themes of entropy, temporality, and subjectivity.” Running fifty feet in length, Fifth Season carves a portal through the very space that houses it.

“Sarah Sze is one of the most important artists of our time,” said Storm King President John P. Stern in a press release. “It has been a joy to work with her and to hear her speak of her many inspirations that led her to create Fallen Sky. Earth, sky, and sculpture are core to what makes Storm King unique and ever-evolving—and Fallen Sky will be beautifully linked to that tradition. We’re thrilled to unveil Sarah’s site-specific commission for Storm King’s permanent collection, as well as the captivating installation Fifth Season, in our Museum Building.”

Fallen Sky will debut alongside Fifth Season on June 26, 2021. Visit Storm King’s website to plan your visit to the outdoor art center.

Sarah Sze is an artist based in New York City. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and a Radcliffe Fellowship in 2005. In 2013, she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Her work is exhibited in museums worldwide and held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Tate Modern. Sze's many public works include permanent works for the Seattle Opera House, The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, and LaGuardia Airport in New York. She received her BFA from Yale University (1991) and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts (1997).