One of the Most Ambitious Art Projects in History Is Hidden in an Extinct Volcano

Some projects are built to last cen­turies. At Roden Crater, James Tur­rell has spent over fifty years trans­form­ing an extinct vol­cano into a vast instru­ment for observ­ing light, sky, and the slow move­ments of the cos­mos, cre­at­ing one of the most ambi­tious long-dura­tion art­works ever attempt­ed.

Across the world, a hand­ful of projects are being built with time­frames that stretch far beyond a sin­gle human life­time. In Lon­don, com­pos­er Jem Fin­er cre­at­ed Long­play­er, a musi­cal com­po­si­tion designed to play con­tin­u­ous­ly for 1,000 years with­out repeat­ing. Else­where, sci­en­tists and gov­ern­ments are wrestling with the oppo­site prob­lem of how to design warn­ings that will remain intel­li­gi­ble tens of thou­sands of years in the future to mark the bur­ial sites of nuclear waste. These projects con­front the same ques­tion from dif­fer­ent directions—how to com­mu­ni­cate across deep time. The work of James Tur­rell belongs to this strange cat­e­go­ry of long-dura­tion think­ing. But rather than pre­serv­ing a mes­sage or a warn­ing, Tur­rell is build­ing an instru­ment he hopes will remain in use for cen­turies to come.

James Tur­rell has spent more than half a cen­tu­ry reshap­ing a vol­cano in the high desert of north­ern Ari­zona. The site, known as Roden Crater, lies with­in the stark expanse of the Paint­ed Desert, where Tur­rell has been grad­u­al­ly trans­form­ing a 400,000-year-old cin­der cone into a mon­u­men­tal obser­va­to­ry ded­i­cat­ed not to astron­o­my in the con­ven­tion­al sense, but to the direct per­cep­tion of light and sky. What began in 1974 as an aer­i­al sight­ing from a small plane has since become one of the most ambi­tious art­works ever attempt­ed: a vast net­work of cham­bers, tun­nels, and aper­tures carved into the extinct vol­cano itself.

Tur­rell dis­cov­ered the crater while fly­ing over the Ari­zona desert dur­ing a Guggen­heim-fund­ed sur­vey of poten­tial sites in the Amer­i­can West. From the air, the cone’s near­ly per­fect sym­me­try sug­gest­ed a nat­ur­al archi­tec­ture wait­ing to be shaped. He pur­chased the land soon after­ward and began a project that would con­sume decades. Since then, the scale of the under­tak­ing has been immense. More than 1.3 mil­lion cubic yards of earth have been moved in order to shape the crater bowl and con­struct the inter­nal spaces, includ­ing an 854-foot tun­nel that leads vis­i­tors into the moun­tain. These pas­sage­ways and cham­bers are care­ful­ly aligned with celes­tial events includ­ing sun­ris­es, sun­sets, lunar cycles, and plan­e­tary move­ments, turn­ing the vol­cano into an instru­ment for observ­ing the chang­ing qual­i­ties of light in the sky above.

The project has demand­ed not only time but extra­or­di­nary per­son­al com­mit­ment. Tur­rell has often joked about the cost of Roden Crater in human terms, remark­ing that the work has tak­en “two mar­riages and a rela­tion­ship.” Unlike most large-scale art­works, the crater has nev­er func­tioned as a com­mer­cial enter­prise. Instead it has remained a long-term exper­i­ment in per­cep­tion: an attempt to cre­ate archi­tec­tur­al spaces where the sky itself becomes the medi­um of the work.

Turrell’s fas­ci­na­tion with light as a mate­r­i­al emerged well before Roden Crater. Born on May 6, 1943 in Los Ange­les, James Tur­rell grew up in a house­hold fol­low­ing the Wilbu­rite Quak­er tra­di­tion, a reli­gious move­ment which reject­ed mod­ern con­ve­niences such as elec­tric appli­ances and even zip­pers, sim­i­lar to the Amish, but also where the con­cept of an “inner light” was under­stood as a direct expe­ri­ence of the divine.

His moth­er was an active mem­ber of the Soci­ety of Friends, and fam­i­ly teach­ings empha­sized qui­et con­tem­pla­tion and inward atten­tion. Tur­rell lat­er recalled being tak­en as a child to a Quak­er meet­ing house by his grand­moth­er and told to “go inside and greet the light,” a moment that crys­tal­lized the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion that would lat­er run through his work. His father, an aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer, intro­duced him ear­ly to avi­a­tion, and Tur­rell obtained his pilot’s license at the age of six­teen, gain­ing first­hand famil­iar­i­ty with vast skies, shift­ing atmos­pheres, and the chang­ing qual­i­ties of light seen from alti­tude.

A for­ma­tive encounter with mod­ern art came a few years ear­li­er dur­ing a vis­it to New York. At fif­teen he stayed with an aunt who worked as a coor­di­nat­ing edi­tor for Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine and intro­duced him to muse­ums. Recall­ing a vis­it to Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, Tur­rell lat­er described see­ing the water lily paint­ings of Claude Mon­et, before encoun­ter­ing a lumi­nous instru­ment cre­at­ed by the Dan­ish-Amer­i­can artist Thomas Wil­fred, whose “Lumia” works used pro­ject­ed light as an artis­tic medi­um. Tur­rell remem­bered the expe­ri­ence vivid­ly: “When I came to see my aunt in New York at age 15… She took me to the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art to show me the Mon­et water lily paint­ings, which I was very impressed by. On the way out, I went by this work by Thomas Wil­fred… this box, with just a screen in the front with frost­ed glass. It looked like the north­ern lights, slow­ly chang­ing. I thought: now some­body is real­ly doing this new art. This is our art.”

Tur­rell lat­er pur­sued these inter­ests aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, earn­ing a BA in per­cep­tu­al psy­chol­o­gy from Pomona Col­lege in 1965, where he stud­ied how the human mind inter­prets sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion and visu­al stim­uli. The field pro­vid­ed a sci­en­tif­ic frame­work for ques­tions that would lat­er define his artis­tic prac­tice. He con­tin­ued grad­u­ate work in both art and per­cep­tu­al psy­chol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, deep­en­ing his inter­est in the bound­ary between opti­cal illu­sion and direct per­cep­tion.

A for­ma­tive episode occurred dur­ing a year he spent in prison after being con­vict­ed for assist­ing young men in avoid­ing the Viet­nam draft. While incar­cer­at­ed, Tur­rell delib­er­ate­ly pro­voked guards until he was placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment, where the absence of visu­al stim­u­lus sharp­ened his atten­tion to the small­est traces of light enter­ing the cell. The sub­tle glow around the door­frame or the faint illu­mi­na­tion of the walls became, in his rec­ol­lec­tion, a kind of per­cep­tu­al lab­o­ra­to­ry. After his release, he returned to Cal­i­for­nia and began con­struct­ing ear­ly instal­la­tions.

Dur­ing this time he became asso­ci­at­ed with the emerg­ing Light and Space move­ment in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, cre­at­ing instal­la­tions that manip­u­lat­ed pro­ject­ed light and altered view­ers’ spa­tial aware­ness. One of his ear­li­est work­ing envi­ron­ments was the Men­do­ta Hotel build­ing in the Ocean Park dis­trict of San­ta Mon­i­ca, where he estab­lished what became known as the Men­do­ta Stu­dio in 1967. There he began cut­ting aper­tures into the walls of the aban­doned struc­ture, using day­light and pro­ject­ed light to reshape how inte­ri­or spaces were per­ceived, exper­i­ment­ing with pro­ject­ed light that seemed to dis­solve the bound­aries between indi­vid­ual rooms, an approach that drew equal­ly from archi­tec­tur­al inter­ven­tion, avi­a­tion, and per­cep­tu­al psy­chol­o­gy.

By this point in his life, Tur­rell was also an expe­ri­enced pilot, a skill that shaped both his artis­tic think­ing and the even­tu­al dis­cov­ery of Roden Crater. Before acquir­ing the vol­cano, he spent years fly­ing across the Amer­i­can West in a small air­craft, study­ing land­scapes from the air. Tur­rell has also described ear­li­er flights over the Himalayas in high-alti­tude recon­nais­sance air­craft, often rumored to have been con­nect­ed to CIA oper­a­tions in fly­ing out Tibetan monks in antic­i­pa­tion of the region’s takeover by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, though he has char­ac­ter­ized these mis­sions sim­ply as “human­i­tar­i­an” work that allowed him to see “beau­ti­ful places to fly.” The expe­ri­ence of nav­i­gat­ing immense spaces at extreme alti­tudes fur­ther rein­forced his inter­est in how light, atmos­phere, and land­scape inter­act.

All of these threads, from avi­a­tion and per­cep­tion to archi­tec­ture and astron­o­my even­tu­al­ly con­verged in the desert of north­ern Ari­zona. Roden Crater is not a sculp­ture in the con­ven­tion­al sense but a per­ma­nent view­ing device embed­ded with­in the earth. Vis­i­tors who even­tu­al­ly enter its cham­bers will encounter care­ful­ly framed aper­tures that trans­form the sky into an opti­cal phe­nom­e­non: a ceil­ing of shift­ing col­or, a disk of dark­ness at noon, or a hori­zon of light at dawn. For Tur­rell, the work is less about alter­ing the sky than about alter­ing how we see it.

The crater rep­re­sents the most mon­u­men­tal expres­sion of James Turrell’s archi­tec­tur­al light envi­ron­ments known as Sky­spaces. First devel­oped in the 1970s, Sky­spaces are care­ful­ly con­struct­ed cham­bers that frame the sky as the cen­tral sub­ject of per­cep­tion. Each is typ­i­cal­ly a qui­et, enclosed room with con­trolled inte­ri­or illu­mi­na­tion and a pre­cise­ly cut aper­ture in the ceil­ing that opens direct­ly to the atmos­phere above. Vis­i­tors sit along the perime­ter while sub­tle shifts in arti­fi­cial light recal­i­brate the eye. At cer­tain moments, the sky appears flat­tened into a dense, almost sol­id plane of col­or; at oth­ers, it seems like a tan­gi­ble sur­face hov­er­ing just beyond reach.

These per­cep­tu­al rever­sals are most intense at sun­rise and sun­set, when nat­ur­al atmos­pher­ic changes inter­act with the cal­i­brat­ed light­ing inside the cham­ber. Rather than pre­sent­ing an object to be viewed, Tur­rell uses archi­tec­ture to manip­u­late the act of see­ing itself, turn­ing the sky into some­thing that feels sculpt­ed, com­pressed, and mate­ri­al­ly present. The result­ing atmos­phere of the space, described by many vis­i­tors as “dream­like,” is no acci­dent, it is the result of Tur­rel­l’s life­long explo­ration of human per­cep­tion and psy­chol­o­gy in regards to nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na. “We dream with many more col­ors than when our eyes are open. It’s no coin­ci­dence that those who have near-death expe­ri­ences put a strong empha­sis on light,” Tur­rell remarked.

Over the past five decades, Tur­rell has cre­at­ed near­ly one hun­dred Sky­spaces across more than thir­ty coun­tries, form­ing a dis­persed glob­al net­work of per­cep­tu­al obser­va­to­ries. Instal­la­tions appear in loca­tions rang­ing from Tas­ma­nia, Chi­na, and Japan to sites across Europe and more than a dozen cities in the Unit­ed States. In 2010 he com­plet­ed a pyra­mid-shaped Sky­space sur­round­ed by reflect­ing pools in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia; the fol­low­ing year he real­ized anoth­er pyra­mid on Mexico’s Yucatán Penin­su­la. In Argentina’s moun­tains, an 18,000-square-foot muse­um is devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to his work. Ta Khut, the first free­stand­ing Sky­space in South Amer­i­ca, is locat­ed at the des­ti­na­tion hotel Posa­da Ayana in Uruguay.

The scale of these works con­tin­ues to expand. One of the most recent, “As Seen Below,” was unveiled last year at ARoS Aarhus Art Muse­um in Den­mark. Ris­ing more than fifty feet high and stretch­ing approx­i­mate­ly 130 feet across, it is the largest Sky­space Tur­rell has cre­at­ed with­in a muse­um set­ting. The instal­la­tion fea­tures an expan­sive domed inte­ri­or bathed in slow­ly shift­ing col­or, punc­tu­at­ed by a cir­cu­lar ocu­lus at its zenith. Through this aper­ture, the chang­ing sky inter­acts with the inte­ri­or illu­mi­na­tion, pro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent per­cep­tu­al effects depend­ing on the time of day and weath­er con­di­tions.

Sky­spaces oper­ate as instru­ments for aware­ness. Whether embed­ded in remote land­scapes, uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es, muse­ums, or desert craters, they return per­sis­tent­ly to the same inquiry that defines Roden Crater itself: how light and space shape human per­cep­tion through the medi­um of land art, and how the sim­ple act of look­ing upward can be trans­formed into an encounter with light as a phe­nom­e­non in its own right.

But Turrell’s ambi­tions at Roden Crater extend far beyond the scale of typ­i­cal land art. The project draws on astron­o­my, optics, and advanced math­e­mat­ics as much as sculp­ture or archi­tec­ture. Tur­rell has stud­ied sub­jects as eso­teric as Rie­mann­ian geom­e­try and vor­tex dynam­ics, using them to think about cur­va­ture, per­cep­tion, and how light moves through space. Astronomers and opti­cal engi­neers have also been involved in the design of the crater’s inter­nal cham­bers, which are aligned to cap­ture light from the sun, moon, stars, and plan­ets. The rim of the vol­cano itself has been sub­tly reshaped so that the sky appears framed or trans­formed when viewed from par­tic­u­lar points inside the crater.

When the site is ful­ly real­ized, the com­plex will con­tain six tun­nels and twen­ty-four view­ing spaces, each cal­i­brat­ed to spe­cif­ic celes­tial events. Turrell’s aim is not sim­ply to pro­vide scenic views but to cre­ate con­trolled per­cep­tu­al con­di­tions, or in oth­er words archi­tec­tur­al instru­ments that allow vis­i­tors to observe the sky as if it were a phys­i­cal object. His ambi­tion, as he once explained, was to build “an area where you had a sense of stand­ing on the plan­et.”

The approach to this cham­ber begins through the East, or Alpha Tun­nel, an 854-foot pas­sage carved deep into the vol­canic earth. Exca­vat­ed direct­ly through the crater’s earth­en struc­ture, the tun­nel com­bines rein­forced con­crete for sta­bil­i­ty with exposed earth walls, cre­at­ing the strange per­cep­tu­al effect of mov­ing through a seem­ing­ly end­less cor­ri­dor. Its elon­gat­ed, key­hole-shaped entrance pro­duces the sen­sa­tion of walk­ing through a gigan­tic opti­cal device. At the far end, what ini­tial­ly appears to be a cir­cu­lar open­ing reveals itself to be an ellipse, a geo­met­ric demon­stra­tion of how an ellipse can appear per­fect­ly round when viewed from a pre­cise van­tage point.

Along the floor, sub­tle light­ing guides vis­i­tors deep­er toward the cham­ber. One of the cen­tral spaces with­in the crater is this space, known as the Sun and Moon Cham­ber, a room that resem­bles a stripped-down astro­nom­i­cal tem­ple. A dark mono­lith­ic struc­ture ris­es from a base of black sil­i­ca stone, with an eight-foot-diam­e­ter cir­cu­lar disk of white mar­ble posi­tioned at its cen­ter. The geom­e­try of the cham­ber directs atten­tion upward toward the sky, turn­ing the open­ing above into a pre­cise opti­cal frame.

Sus­pend­ed above the pas­sage is a mas­sive opti­cal lens pro­duced with assis­tance from engi­neers at the Richard F. Caris Mir­ror Lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and the McDon­ald Obser­va­to­ry in Texas. The six-foot-diam­e­ter lens can be deployed dur­ing spe­cif­ic celes­tial events to con­cen­trate light down the length of the tun­nel. When prop­er­ly aligned, sun­sets or moon­sets are focused into a beam that lands on the disk of white mar­ble known as the “image stone.” Future con­struc­tion is also planned to align the tun­nel with the win­ter sol­stice sun­rise, direct­ing light onto the east­ern side of the stone.

The area is care­ful­ly aligned to rare astro­nom­i­cal cycles. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant is the Major Lunar Stand­still, an event that occurs rough­ly every 18.61 years, when the moon reach­es the extreme lim­its of its ris­ing and set­ting posi­tions on the hori­zon. Tur­rell designed sev­er­al of the crater’s view­ing spaces to syn­chro­nize with this cycle, allow­ing moon­light to enter the struc­ture with par­tic­u­lar pre­ci­sion dur­ing those peri­ods. The last stand­still occurred in April 2025, when the geom­e­try of the crater and the motion of the moon briefly aligned.

The Alpha Tun­nel forms part of a broad­er net­work of obser­va­tion­al struc­tures with­in the crater. Vari­a­tions on Turrell’s Sky­spaces are embed­ded through­out the vol­cano, includ­ing cham­bers such as the East Space and the North Moon Space. These spaces are cal­i­brat­ed to the sub­tle tran­si­tions of dawn and dusk, using angled aper­tures to iso­late bands of light and inten­si­fy the shift­ing col­ors along the hori­zon. Togeth­er they extend Turrell’s larg­er ambi­tion for Roden Crater: trans­form­ing the vol­canic land­scape itself into a series of per­cep­tu­al instru­ments that frame celes­tial events and cre­ate a meet­ing ground between earth, sky, and observ­er.

Con­struct­ing the obser­va­tion­al geom­e­try of Roden Crater required more than intu­ition about land­scape and light. Tur­rell worked with astronomers and astro­physi­cists to cal­cu­late the pre­cise align­ments need­ed for the cham­bers and tun­nels embed­ded with­in the vol­cano. Among those col­lab­o­ra­tors were the astronomer Lar­ry Wasser­man and the physi­cist Richard Walk­er, who helped mod­el the long-term astro­nom­i­cal rela­tion­ships between the crater’s archi­tec­ture and the move­ments of celes­tial bod­ies. Because the Earth’s ori­en­ta­tion and the posi­tions of stars and plan­e­tary bod­ies shift grad­u­al­ly over time, the align­ments had to account for slow astro­nom­i­cal changes as well as present-day obser­va­tions. Some of the sight­lines with­in the crater have even been cal­cu­lat­ed so that their pre­ci­sion improves over cen­turies. Tur­rell has not­ed that one of the lunar align­ments will reach its most exact con­fig­u­ra­tion in rough­ly two mil­len­nia, a time­frame that has fueled the per­sis­tent joke that the project itself may final­ly be fin­ished around the same time.

Among the more tech­ni­cal­ly elab­o­rate areas of the site is the Fuma­role Space, a mul­ti-lev­el instal­la­tion built deep inside the vol­cano’s sec­ondary vent. Vis­i­tors descend through a sequence of cham­bers enclosed with­in a Fara­day cage, a struc­ture designed to shield the inte­ri­or from out­side elec­tro­mag­net­ic inter­fer­ence. The enclo­sure allows sub­tle sig­nals to be iso­lat­ed and trans­lat­ed into sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences. At the cen­ter of the space sits a large glass bowl filled with water, con­nect­ed to a trans­duc­er capa­ble of con­vert­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic ener­gy into sound.

When a vis­i­tor sub­merges their head beneath the water, radio-fre­quen­cy data gath­ered from astro­nom­i­cal sources can be heard direct­ly as vibra­tion and tone, sig­nals asso­ci­at­ed with solar activ­i­ty, the emis­sions of plan­ets such as Nep­tune, Jupiter, and Uranus, or even the broad back­ground radi­a­tion of the Milky Way. The bowl also func­tions as an opti­cal device: light enter­ing from above is focused down­ward so that an image of the sky appears pro­ject­ed onto a bed of white sand below. From with­in the spher­i­cal cham­ber, vis­i­tors can watch clouds drift across the sand sur­face, observe the emer­gence of stars, or track the grad­ual shifts of twi­light. In one part of the space, vis­i­tors will occa­sion­al­ly have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see their shad­ow cast by the the light of Venus.

Anoth­er obser­va­tion­al instru­ment with­in the crater com­plex is the South Space, where Tur­rell con­struct­ed an under­ground tele­scope inspired by ancient obser­va­tion­al archi­tec­ture in India. The struc­ture also recalls the mon­u­men­tal stone instru­ments of the Indi­an obser­va­to­ry of Jan­tar Man­tar as well as the form of the ancient Scot­tish mound of Maeshowe, both designed for direct naked-eye astron­o­my long before elec­tron­ic tele­scopes or com­put­er­ized track­ing sys­tems exist­ed. Turrell’s ver­sion sim­i­lar­ly strips away mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal medi­a­tion, rely­ing instead on geom­e­try and ori­en­ta­tion so that plan­ets and stars can be observed through fixed archi­tec­tur­al aper­tures, much as ear­li­er astronomers once did cen­turies ago.

The South Space also forms part of a larg­er sys­tem of cham­bers and tun­nels that func­tion as cal­i­brat­ed instru­ments for observ­ing celes­tial cycles. Com­plet­ed after years of con­struc­tion and invest­ment esti­mat­ed at rough­ly $13 mil­lion, the cham­ber acts as a pre­cise fram­ing device aligned with Polaris, the star that marks Earth’s rota­tion­al axis in the night sky. A cen­tral inclined struc­ture projects an invert­ed image of the star onto a view­ing sur­face with­in the cham­ber, empha­siz­ing the slow rota­tion of the heav­ens around the pole.

The space is also capa­ble of fram­ing solar and lunar eclipses as well as sea­son­al events such as sol­stices and equinox­es. Around it, oth­er fea­tures with­in the crater include water-filled cham­bers designed to refract and reflect light, immer­sive “light-spa” spaces where col­or and illu­mi­na­tion alter per­cep­tion, and an amphithe­ater intend­ed for com­mu­nal view­ing of the sky. All are con­nect­ed through a net­work of tun­nels that grad­u­al­ly tran­si­tion vis­i­tors from day­light into dark­ness, height­en­ing sen­so­ry aware­ness before the sky is final­ly revealed.

Else­where in the crater, small­er spaces explore more sub­tle opti­cal effects. At the cen­ter of the vol­canic bowl lies the Crater’s Eye, a mon­u­men­tal open-air cham­ber func­tion­ing as one of Turrell’s largest Sky­spaces. Embed­ded with­in the reshaped caldera like a kiva, the struc­ture uses the nat­ur­al cur­va­ture of the crater to frame a vast cir­cu­lar aper­ture of sky. From with­in the cham­ber, vis­i­tors expe­ri­ence an unin­ter­rupt­ed panoram­ic view of the heav­ens from dawn to dusk, with the vol­canic walls act­ing as a nat­ur­al opti­cal device that soft­ens and dif­fus­es incom­ing light. The effect is dis­ori­ent­ing: the sky appears simul­ta­ne­ous­ly immense and strange­ly close, remov­ing the usu­al bound­ary between land­scape and atmos­phere.

Near­by, Tur­rell designed a series of small­er archi­tec­tur­al exper­i­ments, includ­ing the Twi­light Tea Room. This cham­ber takes the form of a 24-foot spher­i­cal struc­ture that Tur­rell once described as resem­bling “a ball rolling down a hill,” par­tial­ly embed­ded with­in the vol­canic slope. Inside, a tele­scope and mir­ror cap­ture the light of the set­ting sun and redi­rect it toward a shal­low gold­en bowl placed with­in the inte­ri­or. As sun­set pro­gress­es, the con­cen­trat­ed light pro­duces dra­mat­ic col­or shifts across the bowl’s sur­face while vis­i­tors pre­pare tea, an expe­ri­ence Tur­rell described sim­ply as gen­er­at­ing “aston­ish­ing col­or.”

Oth­er cham­bers scat­tered through­out the crater con­tin­ue this theme of archi­tec­tur­al astron­o­my. One space, known as the Stu­pa Space, draws inspi­ra­tion from a shrine Tur­rell encoun­tered while trav­el­ing in Afghanistan, while the Arc­turus Seat and the Sad­dle Space are designed to frame spe­cif­ic regions of the sky through care­ful­ly posi­tioned aper­tures. Each space has its own acoustic char­ac­ter and opti­cal behav­ior, com­bin­ing light, echo, and enclo­sure in slight­ly dif­fer­ent ways. Togeth­er they form a net­work of per­cep­tu­al instru­ments embed­ded with­in the vol­cano, trans­form­ing the geo­log­i­cal struc­ture of the crater into a vast obser­va­to­ry where land­scape, archi­tec­ture, and celes­tial motion become insep­a­ra­ble.

The scale and ambi­tion of Roden Crater nat­u­ral­ly rais­es a ques­tion: how did an artist end up com­mit­ting decades of work to reshap­ing a vol­cano in the desert? The ori­gins of the project trace back to a peri­od when Tur­rell was already explor­ing the rela­tion­ship between land­scape, avi­a­tion, and per­cep­tion. After receiv­ing a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship in the ear­ly 1970s, he began fly­ing across the west­ern Unit­ed States in a Helio Couri­er H295, a rugged short-take­off air­craft well suit­ed to remote ter­rain. The grant allowed him to con­duct an aer­i­al sur­vey of pos­si­ble sites where large-scale per­cep­tu­al instal­la­tions might be con­struct­ed direct­ly with­in the land itself.

In 1974, James Tur­rell con­duct­ed aer­i­al sur­veys across the Amer­i­can West, spend­ing sev­en months and log­ging near­ly 500 hours of flight time search­ing for a site suit­able for what would become his defin­ing work. Dur­ing one of these flights, head­ing east across north­ern Ari­zona, Tur­rell spot­ted a near­ly sym­met­ri­cal vol­canic cone ris­ing from the desert floor. Curi­ous, he land­ed near­by and hiked to the sum­mit. That night he camped on the rim of the crater and observed the sky from its inte­ri­or. The geom­e­try of the cone, com­bined with the clar­i­ty of the desert atmos­phere, sug­gest­ed some­thing extra­or­di­nary: a nat­ur­al struc­ture that could be trans­formed into a mon­u­men­tal instru­ment for observ­ing light. The vol­cano he had stum­bled upon was called Roden Crater, and from that moment for­ward it became the cen­tral work of his life.

With­in three years of dis­cov­er­ing Roden Crater, Tur­rell had begun the prac­ti­cal work required to trans­form the vol­canic cone into an astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ry. He first secured a lease on the land, car­ried out geo­log­i­cal and astro­nom­i­cal sur­veys, and con­struct­ed a mod­est octag­o­nal house on site that served as both stu­dio and liv­ing quar­ters dur­ing the ear­ly years of devel­op­ment. A deci­sive step came when the Dia Art Foun­da­tion agreed to sup­port the project. In the late 1970s the foun­da­tion pur­chased the crater and pro­vid­ed Tur­rell with a stipend so he could con­cen­trate on design­ing and exca­vat­ing the com­plex of tun­nels and cham­bers that would even­tu­al­ly shape the inte­ri­or of the vol­cano.

The arrange­ment allowed the project to move for­ward at a pace rarely pos­si­ble for a work of this scale. Tur­rell lat­er reac­quired the prop­er­ty through his own foun­da­tion and devel­oped a prac­ti­cal rhythm for sus­tain­ing the long-term con­struc­tion. Each year he sched­uled exhi­bi­tions and instal­la­tions of his light works in muse­ums and gal­leries, projects that gen­er­at­ed fund­ing dur­ing the autumn and win­ter months. Those pro­ceeds were then direct­ed back into exca­va­tion and con­struc­tion at the crater through the spring and sum­mer, when work in the desert was most fea­si­ble. Roden Crater was not Turrell’s only poten­tial site when he began search­ing the Amer­i­can West, he eval­u­at­ed sev­er­al vol­canic for­ma­tions and even retained a min­ing lease on one of the alter­na­tives, but the sym­me­try and geo­log­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty of Roden ulti­mate­ly made it the most viable loca­tion.

Over time the project also came to depend on a wider con­stel­la­tion of patrons, insti­tu­tions, and tech­ni­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors beyond the ini­tial insti­tu­tion­al back­ing. Astronomer and engi­neers pro­vid­ed exper­tise where Tur­rel­l’s own knowl­edge was lack­ing while finan­cial stew­ard­ship and fundrais­ing have large­ly been coor­di­nat­ed through Turrell’s Sky­s­tone Foun­da­tion, which chan­nels sup­port from col­lec­tors, muse­ums, and phil­an­thropic donors who have com­mis­sioned his instal­la­tions around the world.

Major atten­tion arrived from out­side the tra­di­tion­al art world when the musi­cian Kanye West vis­it­ed the site dur­ing a pri­vate tour and, to Tur­rel­l’s sur­prise, lat­er pledged $10 mil­lion toward the project’s com­ple­tion. In West­’s words, he wish­es for the site to be “expe­ri­enced and enjoyed for eter­ni­ty.” Por­tions of the crater lat­er appeared in West­’s 2019 film Jesus Is King, intro­duc­ing the still-unfin­ished obser­va­to­ry to a much broad­er audi­ence. While Roden Crater remains large­ly closed to the pub­lic, the com­bi­na­tion of insti­tu­tion­al back­ing, sci­en­tif­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion, and high-pro­file patron­age has ensured that the project con­tin­ues to advance rather than fade into obscu­ri­ty, even as Turrell’s oth­er light works main­tain strong demand in the inter­na­tion­al art mar­ket.

Geo­graph­i­cal­ly, the vol­cano itself is sub­stan­tial. The cone ris­es rough­ly 580 feet above the sur­round­ing desert floor and mea­sures near­ly two miles in diam­e­ter, form­ing a nat­ur­al struc­ture large enough to con­tain an entire net­work of archi­tec­tur­al spaces. Nat­u­ral­ly, the sheer scale of the site means that despite decades of work, the project still remains unfin­ished. Esti­mates have sug­gest­ed that com­plet­ing the remain­ing cham­bers and vis­i­tor facil­i­ties could require an addi­tion­al $15–25 mil­lion.

Beyond the art­work itself, long-term plans have includ­ed mod­est accom­mo­da­tion for vis­i­tors in the form of cab­ins with­in the sur­round­ing land­scape as well as sup­port­ing spaces such as a restau­rant, amp­ithe­ater, a wine cel­lar, and sub­ter­ranean series of water-filled cham­bers fed by under­ground wells. The cham­bers will be com­prised of spa and bathing areas con­nect­ed to an 8‑foot-deep pool that will open towards the desert hori­zon. These addi­tions are intend­ed less as lux­u­ry ameni­ties than as prac­ti­cal infra­struc­ture for a remote site designed to host extend­ed vis­its and night­time obser­va­tion of the sky, although the pro­pos­al has been likened to the lux­u­ry hotel Aman­giri, locat­ed in the Utah desert.

The geo­log­i­cal ori­gins of the site extend far deep­er in time. Roden Crater formed rough­ly 380,000 years ago dur­ing the Pleis­tocene epoch as part of the San Fran­cis­co Vol­canic Field in north­ern Ari­zona, a region con­tain­ing more than six hun­dred vol­canic vents spread across approx­i­mate­ly 1,800 square miles. The field itself devel­oped through tec­ton­ic exten­sion asso­ci­at­ed with the Basin and Range Province, pro­duc­ing numer­ous small vol­ca­noes across the high desert plateau.

Roden Crater is a clas­sic cin­der cone, cre­at­ed through Strom­bo­lian-style erup­tions in which gas-rich basaltic mag­ma frag­ments into air­borne pyro­clasts that accu­mu­late around the vol­canic vent, grad­u­al­ly build­ing the steep-sided cone. The rock itself con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of basaltic sco­ria and ash, includ­ing dark gray to black olivine basalt con­tain­ing phe­nocrysts of olivine, clinopy­rox­ene, and pla­gio­clase sus­pend­ed with­in a fine-grained ground­mass. Oxi­da­tion of iron-rich min­er­als has giv­en the sur­round­ing slopes their dis­tinc­tive red and black col­oration. Inter­est­ing­ly, a close­ly com­pa­ra­ble vol­canic geol­o­gy appears in the cliffs of Lal­i­bela in Ethiopia, where rough­ly nine hun­dred years ago an ear­li­er form of mon­u­men­tal land sculp­ture was carved direct­ly into sim­i­lar iron-rich vol­canic rock.

The envi­ron­ment sur­round­ing the crater is also essen­tial to the work. Because the project depends on the clar­i­ty and dark­ness of the night sky, Tur­rell has been deeply con­cerned about the impact of arti­fi­cial light­ing. The near­by city of Flagstaff is inter­na­tion­al­ly known for its strict light­ing reg­u­la­tions and was des­ig­nat­ed the world’s first Inter­na­tion­al Dark-Sky Asso­ci­a­tion “dark sky city.” Even so, Tur­rell has advo­cat­ed for addi­tion­al pro­tec­tions to lim­it light pol­lu­tion that could inter­fere with the astro­nom­i­cal align­ments built into the crater.

To fur­ther pro­tect the land­scape, Tur­rell has grad­u­al­ly acquired large tracts of sur­round­ing land, even­tu­al­ly assem­bling more than 227 square miles around the site. The buffer pre­vents near­by devel­op­ment that might obstruct views of the hori­zon or intro­duce unwant­ed light­ing into the desert envi­ron­ment. The prop­er­ty is known as Walk­ing Cane Ranch, and along­side the art project it func­tions as a work­ing cat­tle oper­a­tion. The ranch sup­ports a herd of rough­ly 2,500 Black Angus cat­tle, sup­ply­ing beef to restau­rants while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly main­tain­ing the open char­ac­ter of the land sur­round­ing the crater.

Turrell’s path to this point has been unusu­al even by the stan­dards of con­tem­po­rary art. Over the course of sev­er­al decades he has moved between roles as a pilot, archi­tect, opti­cal design­er, ranch­er, and artist, all while main­tain­ing Roden Crater as the cen­tral project of his career. What began as a soli­tary obser­va­tion made from the cock­pit of a small air­craft has grad­u­al­ly devel­oped into one of the most ambi­tious works of land-based art ever attempt­ed. Today the crater is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the defin­ing projects of envi­ron­men­tal and per­cep­tu­al art of the late twen­ti­eth and ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­turies.

Unlike many oth­er art­works, Roden Crater is not intend­ed to be viewed quick­ly or explained eas­i­ly. Its spaces unfold slow­ly, often requir­ing vis­i­tors to remain in dark­ness or still­ness while the sky changes above them. Tur­rell has repeat­ed­ly empha­sized that the work does not sim­ply frame the heav­ens but alters the act of look­ing itself. In that sense, the project is less a mon­u­ment than a per­cep­tu­al instru­ment, an envi­ron­ment where light, land­scape, and time com­bine to pro­duce an expe­ri­ence that exists some­where between art, astron­o­my, and archi­tec­ture.

For decades the obvi­ous ques­tion sur­round­ing Roden Crater has been a sim­ple one: when will the pub­lic actu­al­ly be able to see it? Tur­rell orig­i­nal­ly hoped the project might open in the 1990s, but the com­plex­i­ty of the exca­va­tion, the pre­ci­sion required for its astro­nom­i­cal align­ments, and the con­stant chal­lenge of fund­ing have repeat­ed­ly pushed that time­line fur­ther and fur­ther into the future.

A rare glimpse came in 2015, when Tur­rell briefly opened the crater to a small group of vis­i­tors for a series of pri­vate view­ing ses­sions. Only eighty peo­ple were admit­ted across four days of guid­ed expe­ri­ences inside the crater’s cham­bers. Atten­dance required a $5,000 dona­tion to the Sky­s­tone Foun­da­tion, the non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion estab­lished to sup­port the project’s con­tin­ued con­struc­tion and preser­va­tion. Vis­i­tors also paid an addi­tion­al fee of rough­ly $1,500, which cov­ered accom­mo­da­tion near the remote site as well as meals and guid­ed tours through the com­plet­ed sec­tions of the crater.

Out­side of those rare events, access has remained extreme­ly lim­it­ed. Tur­rell has occa­sion­al­ly invit­ed muse­um cura­tors, researchers, col­lab­o­ra­tors, and long­time sup­port­ers to vis­it the site pri­vate­ly while con­struc­tion con­tin­ues. For devot­ed fol­low­ers of his work there is also an infor­mal path­way some­times referred to as the “Tur­rell Tour,” an itin­er­ary that involves vis­it­ing instal­la­tions and exhi­bi­tions of Turrell’s light envi­ron­ments across muse­ums and per­ma­nent sites around the world, which span more than 30 coun­tries. These works, rang­ing from indoor Sky­spaces to large-scale archi­tec­tur­al com­mis­sions, offer par­tial insight into the per­cep­tu­al ideas that ulti­mate­ly cul­mi­nate at Roden Crater.

For now, the vol­cano remains large­ly closed to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Yet the project con­tin­ues to grow in both rep­u­ta­tion and antic­i­pa­tion. Over the years Turrell’s instal­la­tions have appeared at insti­tu­tions such as the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, and the Muse­um of Fine Arts Hous­ton, where audi­ences can expe­ri­ence the same care­ful manip­u­la­tion of light and per­cep­tion that defines the crater itself. These works func­tion almost like frag­ments of a much larg­er exper­i­ment, small­er envi­ron­ments that hint at the scale of the vol­canic obser­va­to­ry still tak­ing shape in the Ari­zona desert.

Look­ing ahead, plans call for Roden Crater to even­tu­al­ly open through a reser­va­tion-based sys­tem that would allow con­trolled pub­lic access while pro­tect­ing the site’s frag­ile envi­ron­ment. The project has also been dis­cussed as a poten­tial loca­tion for research col­lab­o­ra­tions in astron­o­my, build­ing on Turrell’s orig­i­nal ambi­tion to cre­ate a naked-eye obser­va­to­ry capa­ble of fram­ing celes­tial events with unusu­al pre­ci­sion. Progress has con­tin­ued slow­ly but steadi­ly in recent years, includ­ing the com­ple­tion of the South Space in 2019, sug­gest­ing that the long-delayed open­ing may final­ly be mov­ing clos­er to real­i­ty. Even when access does become pos­si­ble, vis­it­ing the site will remain an under­tak­ing in itself: the crater sits in an iso­lat­ed stretch of north­ern Ari­zona, reached pri­mar­i­ly by unpaved dirt roads branch­ing off U.S. Route 89, where the final approach requires high-clear­ance vehi­cles to nav­i­gate the rugged desert ter­rain.

Roden Crater has now been under con­struc­tion for more than half a cen­tu­ry, mak­ing it one of the longest-run­ning art­works in con­tem­po­rary prac­tice. Its com­ple­tion remains uncer­tain, but that uncer­tain­ty has become part of the project’s mythol­o­gy. Unlike a con­ven­tion­al muse­um instal­la­tion, the crater is tied to geo­log­i­cal time, astro­nom­i­cal cycles, and the slow process­es of exca­va­tion and engi­neer­ing. Tur­rell con­tin­ues to vis­it the site almost dai­ly, work­ing close­ly with two archi­tects while teams of spe­cial­ist con­trac­tors han­dle fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion for instal­la­tions around the world. The ranch sur­round­ing the crater also plays a prac­ti­cal role in sus­tain­ing the project; agri­cul­tur­al oper­a­tions on the prop­er­ty help sub­si­dize the ongo­ing work. Turrell’s wife over­sees finances and invest­ments con­nect­ed to the site, help­ing man­age the long-term logis­ti­cal demands of the project.

Despite an exem­plary career span­ning more than six­ty years, Tur­rell has some­times not­ed that his work has not always con­vinced mem­bers of his own Quak­er fam­i­ly. “They don’t believe in what I do. Accord­ing to them, art is van­i­ty, an ego boost­er,” he once remarked. The irony, as he points out, is that he has cre­at­ed sev­er­al meet­ing hous­es for Quak­er gath­er­ings as well as instal­la­tions in reli­gious spaces, includ­ing a Luther­an chapel in Berlin. He has also main­tained a strong cul­tur­al con­nec­tion to France through his father’s her­itage, and in 1991 he was named Cheva­lier des Arts et des Let­tres by French pres­i­dent François Mit­ter­rand fol­low­ing exhi­bi­tions that helped estab­lish his rep­u­ta­tion in Europe.

Tur­rell has remained reluc­tant to offer a firm pub­lic open­ing date for Roden Crater, espe­cial­ly after a pro­ject­ed 2024 time­line passed with­out com­ple­tion. Yet he shows no signs of slow­ing down with the oth­er projects cur­rent­ly in progress, and the ideas devel­oped inside the Ari­zona vol­cano con­tin­ue to expand out­ward into oth­er mon­u­men­tal projects. One of the most ambi­tious is a set of per­ma­nent instal­la­tions planned for the desert val­ley of Wadi AlFann in Sau­di Ara­bia, com­mis­sioned by the Roy­al Com­mis­sion for AlU­la. The project spans rough­ly six­ty-five square kilo­me­ters of desert and will include large-scale works by artists such as Agnes Denes and Michael Heiz­er as well as local artists Ahmed Mater and Man­al AlDowayan.

Turrell’s con­tri­bu­tion will again involve a net­work of path­ways, tun­nels, cham­bers, and stair­cas­es carved into the land­scape, guid­ing vis­i­tors through alter­nat­ing zones of dark­ness and light before emerg­ing into cir­cu­lar Sky­spaces that frame celes­tial phe­nom­e­na. Above ground, ele­ments such as an obelisk aligned with the move­ment of the sun and con­stel­la­tion maps embed­ded in the ter­rain will form a plan­e­tary dia­gram that visu­al­izes the posi­tions of celes­tial bod­ies across the sky.

These projects reflect Turrell’s long-stand­ing inter­est in what he describes as the “thing­ness of light,” the idea that light itself can become the sub­ject of per­cep­tion rather than sim­ply a means of reveal­ing objects. “I call atten­tion to the truth. Art his­to­ry is lit­tered with artists who have this fas­ci­na­tion with how things are illu­mi­nat­ed: Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Car­avag­gio and Tit­ian, then some­one like Turn­er — boy, was he pre­scient! — all the way up to Rothko, who had the glow of light com­ing off the paint­ing. I’m inter­est­ed in the thing­ness of light — not that light is reveal­ing some­thing about an object or anoth­er thing, but that light becomes a rev­e­la­tion itself.”

If and when Roden Crater even­tu­al­ly opens on a wider scale, vis­i­tors will not sim­ply encounter a sculp­ture or a build­ing. They will enter a land­scape-sized instru­ment for observ­ing light itself, a place where the move­ment of the sun, moon, and stars becomes the mate­r­i­al of the work. When the obser­va­to­ry is com­plete, Turrell’s work will essen­tial­ly be fin­ished. The land will have been shaped, the tun­nels exca­vat­ed, the celes­tial align­ments set. From that point for­ward, the obser­va­to­ry will depend on a col­lab­o­ra­tion with forces far beyond the artist’s con­trol. The sky will take it from there.