James Turrell, 'Celestial Vault' 1996

Location: Machiel Vrijenhoeklaan 175, Kijkduin

"This work, although it bears all the trademarks of a Turrell piece, perhaps due to its open aspect stands out amongst his other large scale installations." - Artnet News, 6 September 2015

The idea to invite Turrell first occurred when Stroom participated in the preparations for the International Conference of Landscape Architecture held in 1992 in The Hague whose theme was the relation between landscape architecture and the visual arts. The scale of the original plan of an artificial crater in the dunes was so grand that no one believed that it would ever be realized.

In the dunes of The Hague, where light can have such a tangible presence, Turrell created a place to gaze at the sky: ‘Celestial Vault' in Kijkduin. At the top of one of the rubble dunes, a bowl in the shape of an ellipse has been built, 30 meters wide and 40 meters long. A wall of earth, approximately 5 meters high encloses the bowl. In order to reach this artificial crater you first climb up the dune on wooden stairs and then walk through a six meter long concrete passageway. The slopes on the inside of the crater have been sown with grass and a monumental natural stone bench is in the middle on which two people can lie back and observe how the sky is a vault. A similar bench is located on a higher dune where a panorama unfolds over the sea, the beach and the flat countryside beyond. In the direction of the horizon, the vault gradually becomes flatter. For Turrell, light and space themselves are the object and one of the points he wants to make is that, during the act of observation, the observer should experience that he/she is observing.

Acknowledgment:
The Celestial Vault is madee possible by: Mondriaan Fund, Herinneringsfonds Vincent van Gogh, Oibibio, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Gravin van Bylandt Stichting, City of The Hague and Fonds 1818.

Address
Machiel Vrijenhoeklaan 175, Kijkduin, across from restaurant De Haagsche Beek

Public Transport
From Station CS: take bus 24 (direction Den Haag Kijkduin) - after circa 37 minutes get off at bus stop Kijkduin (final stop) - walk on for 500 meters.
From Station Hollands Spoor: tram 1 to the city center, transfer to bus 24.

By Car
Follow Laan van Meerdervoort up to the Kijkduinse straat; turn right; at traffic lights, turn left into Machiel Vrijenhoeklaan, and drive on to restaurant De Haagsche Beek.

More aerial pictures of The Celestial Vault:
www.siebeswart.nl

VR film of The Celestial Vault with 360 degrees video and sound, recorded spring 2020 by Yota Morimoto
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