The Figge Art Museum illuminated the night sky over the Mississippi River Saturday with the grand unveiling of Evanescent Field, a major public art installation by internationally renowned light artist Leo Villareal.
The artwork, comprising more than 1,000 full-color LED lights spanning 5,000 linear feet across the museum’s glass exterior, marks the largest public art installation ever created in Iowa.
Hundreds gathered at Bechtel Plaza outside the Figge for the much-anticipated debut. Commissioned to commemorate the Figge’s centennial year, Evanescent Field is being hailed as a transformative milestone in public art for the Midwest.
Villareal, a New York-based artist best known for monumental works such as The Bay Lights on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge and Illuminated River, which spans nine bridges along London’s Thames, created Evanescent Field specifically for the Figge.
"I'm very interested in the history of art and abstraction, but this is much more than just a two-dimensional painting," he said. "It's an amazing piece of architecture, and it's so volumetric."
The artwork activates all four sides of the building, using custom software and programming to generate endlessly changing abstract light sequences that slowly change the building's color. According to Villareal, the patterns will never repeat, offering a different visual experience with every visit.
“You'll never see the exact same progression twice, and it will maintain a sense of mystery," he said. "This truly is a gift to the community that anyone can look at and see something new and special, and I hope that a lot of people who may never come into an art gallery or a museum will see this and feel welcome here.”
Villareal said that Evanescent Field explores the fleeting nature of perception, with waves of color and motion that suggest the rhythms and currents of the nearby Mississippi River.
"This truly is a gift to the community that anyone can look at and see something new and special, and I hope that a lot of people who may never come into an art gallery or a museum will see this and feel welcome here.”Leo Villareal, light artist
The Figge Art Museum began as the Davenport Municipal Art Gallery in 1925, and was established with a gift of 334 artworks from former mayor Charles A. Ficke. It later became the Davenport Museum of Art in 1987 and was renamed the Figge Art Museum in 2005 after the opening of its new building, which was named in honor of the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Foundation.
According to Figge Executive Director Melissa Moore, the building's designer, British architect Sir David Chipperfield, always intended for the building's exterior to glow.
"The dream was always to illuminate the facade, but it just wasn't the time for us to do that," she said. "Technology changed so drastically, we started to just think bigger, think beyond turning on lights to illuminate, and think about the role that light-based art can play in illumination."
The $4 million project was made possible through a combination of public and private funding, including a $1.6 million award from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Destination Iowa Creative Placemaking Fund.
"Philanthropy at its highest — that's really why we exist today. It's the goodness of people and the vision and dedication they had to making sure that everyone has access to art," Moore said. "You don't have to be in a large metropolitan area to experience world-class art. So it's in that spirit that we're really celebrating Evanescent Field as a gift for the next 100 years and beyond. We wanted to make sure that as we acknowledge and recognize our 100th anniversary, we could give something to the community, and that's exactly what public art and Evanescent Field can do."
