Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Houghton Hall, a lavish English country house built by Great Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, announced that the American artist James Turrell will create a site-specific installation for the institution in June 2015. The Palladian estate, which is now home to David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, and his wife, Rose, boasts a sculpture park, spectacular interiors, exquisite furniture, rarely exhibited paintings by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Artemisia Gentileschi, and John Singer Sargent, and celebrated collections of silver, marble, and Sèvres porcelain.

In recent years, Lord Cholmondeley has commissioned a number of contemporary outdoor sculptures for Houghton Hall, including works by Turrell, Richard Long, Stephen Cox, Zhan Wang, Amy Gallaccio, and Jeppe Hein. The new installation by Turrell, which will illuminate the entire west facade of the estate, is part of the major exhibition “LightScape: James Turrell at Houghton.” In addition to the west facade work, the show will include “ Seldom Seen” (2004), an interiorly lit wooden chamber with a sky-facing square opening that rises into the canopy of surrounding trees, and “St. Elmo’s Breath” (1992), which is housed in an eighteenth-century water tower in the park and appears to be a flat surface, but upon closer inspection reveals itself to be light emitted from a seemingly bottomless hollow in the wall. “LightScape” will also include Turrell’s light projections from the 1960s, holograms, and a work from his “Tall Glass” series, which was made by placing LEDs behind frosted glass and programming the lights to change slowly over the course of several hours.

Turrell is best known for his groundbreaking exploration of light, color, and space. His immersive works push the boundaries of human perception and create all-encompassing sensory experiences. Turrell has said, “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

In 2013, Turrell’s work was the subject of three major U.S. exhibitions -- “James Turrell: The Light Inside” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, “James Turrell: A Retrospective” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and “James Turrell” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In July 2014, he was honored with a National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government.

“LightScape: James Turrell at Houghton” will be on view at Houghton Hall from June 7, 2015, to October 24, 2015.