james Turrell skyspace to open in 2025 at the Keith House in Fort Worth, Texas (The Architect’s Newspaper)
By Trevor Schillaci • January 10, 2025 • Art, News, Southwest
Artist James Turrell is perhaps best known for his “skyspace” installations. A rendition of the immersive, light-centric pieces is readying to be unveiled in Fort Worth, Texas. The work was commissioned for the Keith House, an event space for nonprofits operated by the Meta Alice Keith Bratten Foundation. Known as Come to Good, the installation follows the typical prescriptions of a Turrell work—a retractable segment of the Keith House roof moves to reveal a skyward opening that enhances the spatial quality of the large meeting room beneath it. Accompanying the opening of the aperture is a “sunrise and sunset sequence,” wherein a series of lights color the walls of the meeting room.
Modeled after a protestant meeting house—an important public building typology in early colonial America—the Keith House serves as a venue for “events and gathering,” according to its website. The structure was designed by Bennett Partners, a North Texas–based architecture, interiors, and planning firm. Construction completed in 2023. Assembled using limestone block repurposed from the Keith family home in Wichita Falls, Texas, the building’s materiality puts a Texas-spin on this colonial typology. Similarly, the building is wrapped by a spacious veranda, another nod to its Southern context. The Keith House is located within Clearfork, a mixed-use development sited along the Trinity River.
The Meta Alice Keith Bratten Foundation, established in 2010, carries out the philanthropic mission of its namesake, a Fort Worth ISD teacher, TCU alumnus, and prominent local community member. Bratten began her philanthropy after inheriting the estate of her great uncle, Ben E. Keith, the founder of a regional food and beverage distribution company.
Come to Good is the fifth Turrell skyspace to come to Texas, joining previous works located at The University of Texas at Austin, Rice University, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and the Live Oak Friends Meeting, a quaker meeting house located in Houston. Turrell’s work for the DMA, entitled Tending (Blue), has been closed at the request of the artist since 2012, after Museum Tower, an adjacent residential development encroached on the aperture’s view of the sky.
The skyspace is expected to open to the public in spring, 2025.