With a grant from the American Art Program, the Western Gallery at Western Washington University will mount two outdoor sculpture exhibitions, each celebrating an artist whose work invites viewers to explore the cosmos in unique, and often interactive, ways.

“Looking Up: The Skyviewing Sculptures of Isamu Noguchi” will feature a large loan of sculptures and drawings from The Noguchi Museum in New York, and “Nancy Holt’s Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings: Geological Place and Cosmological Space” will include photographs, films, and other objects on loan from the Holt-Smithson Foundation.

The Western Washington University Foundation has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation on behalf of the Western Gallery. The grant from the Luce Foundation’s American Art Program will support two exhibitions, publications, and programming related to Western Gallery’s outdoor sculpture collection.

Scheduling is under way for the two exhibitions: “Looking Up: The Skyviewing Sculptures of Isamu Noguchi” and “Nancy Holt’s ‘Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings’ – Geological Place and Cosmological Space.” They are expected to open in 2020-21.

Both Noguchi and Holt sought to connect the viewer to the cosmos through naked-eye observatories, reflective pools, and sculptures aligned to specific astrological events.

Read the full announcement