Updated: March 14, 2005

British Artist Andy Goldsworthy Creates Site-Specific Installation for National Gallery of Art's East Building

Andy Goldsworthy, Working Drawing for Roof, 2004
pencil on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong

Washington, DC - British artist Andy Goldsworthy has been commissioned to create a site-specific sculpture for the National Gallery of Art's East Building. The project, Roof, will comprise approximately nine stacked slate, low-profile hollow domes five and a half feet high and 27 feet in diameter, with centered oculi two feet in diameter. The installation will run the length of the ground-level garden area on the north side of the East Building along Pennsylvania Avenue. Goldsworthy selected the domical form, with which he has worked since the late 1970s, as a counterpoint to the many architectural domes in Washington, D.C. The artist, his assistant, and a team of five British wallers will begin installing the work on November 29, 2004, pause for the holidays, and return to finish by the beginning of February 2005.