Yesterday the Seattle Art Museum unveiled Doug Aitken‘s new permanent installation entitled Mirrors. Three tall, shining letters, arranged vertically and created with mirror, delineate S-A-M. Now, when you are moving down First Avenue, you can quickly discern the museum from all the other nearby skycrapers.  This works perfectly if you are going south on First; the SAM letters look perfect.  It creates a bit of a problem if you are moving north on First, for then you see the S in SAM is backwards.

     Looking at sign from North.                        Looking at sign from South.

Hmmm.  Still, it is nice to see the sign extending a bit over the sidewalk; it helps you identify the museum immediately.  The mirrored letters are outlined in white neon, which really helps them stand out, especially at night.

In addition to the letters, the new installation brings an ever-changing face to the city’s landmark museum for, just behind the SAM letters, a large glass-covered screen has constantly changing video. Aitken shot all the  footage himself in the Pacific northwest. Images of local mountains, waterscapes, and the city itself flash across the screen in response to changing weather and light conditions.

There is a kalideiscopic effect going on here too; the images on the screen appear to be doubled and moving inward from the outside of the frames, or the reverse, I couldn’t stay in one place long enough to figure it out.  The only good vantage point for viewing the screen is from across the street on First.  I don’t know how you would get around this problem of limited sightlines using these materials and the exterior city elements, unless the entire facade of the building was used as a screen.  I suppose the cost would render this idea impossible. Still, despite these limitations, the installation seems to me to be an interesting way to integrate the outside of museum into the city, in a relatively unique way.

This picture shows the Union Street facade of the building.  It has a second SAM sign as visible here.

The installation is further enlivened with the use of narrow columns of colored lights that appear to run up and down the building’s western facade in the areas over the glass screen.    All of the light strips start about 20 feet off the ground and run up about 2/3rds of the building’s sides.

The lights go on and off at varying locations and speeds, so that the surface never appears static.  Nevertheless, this effect is relatively subtle, and you can look at the installation for a while before the lights actually register.  I appreciate this, because it never looks like a honky-tonk kind of advertisement.  It is much more sophisticated.

Aitken said: “I was interested in the idea of creating a living museum, a downtown building that could change in real time in relation to the environment around it. It‘s like an urban earthwork.” The artist works in both Los Angeles and New York, and has had prior installations at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as other prestigious museums. His work for SAM is his first-ever permanent museum installation.