Intersections: Lee Boroson

Conceived specifically for The Phillips Collection, Lee Boroson’s Lunar Bower engages the ceiling of the museum’s Vrandenburg Café. Panels of silky and woolen fabric in subdued colors are sewn together and stretched across the space, suggesting an ethereal, moon-filled sky reminiscent of many of Albert Pinkham Ryder’s paintings from The Phillips Collection. Inspired by Ryder’s moody and poetic, intense and expressive work, Boroson has imbued the Phillips’s café with a moonlit radiance that directly relates to the lustrous effect of Ryder’s paintings from the 1880–90s, such as Moonlit Cove, Fisherman Hut, and Macbeth and the Witches. In Lunar Bower, the colored light (using pre-existing lighting fixtures) is given a corporeal presence as it filters through the hanging sculpture and mingles with natural light from the nearby windows. This “night sky” culminates in the central light fixture that glows like the moon. As the title suggests, the piece envelops the space and the viewer in an atmosphere of nocturnal serenity and a sense of mystery.

Boroson is best known for his inflated sculptures produced in various synthetic materials, such as nylon, organza, microfilament, and fleece. Mostly of monumental scale, these buoyant and often colorful environments have evolved from the artist’s interest in nature, architectural structures, anatomical studies, and fairy tales. Designed for their specific sites, these whimsical works explore both sheer physicality of the contained space and the perception and experience of it.