As a prominent cultural institution, ARoS is constantly developing to both reflect and address present societal challenges. The Next Level is the expansion project developed in collaboration with the American artist James Turrell.
The expansion will contain a 1000 m² subterranean gallery and The Dome - a semisubterranean art installation.
James Turrell is one of the world's leading artists working with light, colours and art installations with permanent installations in over 26 countries. His works have the common feature that they embrace the audience through light and colour effects controlled by the artist. Turrell’s often colourful room installations are reminiscent of three-dimensional light paintings, where he connects the earthly with the heavenly and body and sense with the mind and thought. The Next Level is his biggest project within a museum context.
ARoS - The Next Level
An Evolving Cultural Heart
ARoS Aarhus Art Museum is a significant cultural beacon in Aarhus, Denmark. To uphold its appeal, pertinence, and integrity, the museum is constantly evolving to reflect the technological, economical, and social changes occurring both locally and globally.
Art is a medium that not only mirrors, influences, and challenges established norms, but also draws inspiration from them. Thus, art and societal changes are intricately linked, and leading art museums such as ARoS have a crucial role in fostering and directing this relationship. This involves not only shaping their programmes and exhibitions but also providing physical spaces that stimulate and showcase this dialogue effectively.
ARoS – The Next Level takes visitors on a sensuous horizontal journey through a subterranean gallery that opens to the monumental art installation and Skyspace, The Dome, by American artists James Turrell.
As many of ARoS’ existing exhibition spaces are located fully or partially below ground, the subterranean gallery and The Dome may on one hand appear like a natural extension, while on the other it presents a unique approach to the curation of art, light, and space to offer an astonishing experience and encourage public engagement.
It is the continuous dialogue between ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and Schmidt Hammer Lassen which laid the ground for the development and visualisation of ARoS – The Next Level. The Dome is undeniably the centrepiece that, together with the subterranean gallery, merges art and architecture into a new civic and accessible experience.
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For over half a century, James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception.
My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.
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- Location:
- Aarhus, Denmark
- Programme:
- Art museum
- Size:
- 4,000 m²
- Client:
- Aarhus Municipality, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum
- Client consultant:
- Kuben Management A/S
- Competition:
- Direct commission
- Engineer & subconsultant:
- COWI A/S
- Artist collaboration:
- James Turrell (US)
- Landscape architect:
- Schmidt Hammer Lassen
- Contractor:
- Per Aarsleff A/S
- Renders:
- B&B, FORBESMASSIE, Schmidt Hammer Lassen
- Photos:
- Adam Mørk, Mads Smidstrup ©ARoS 2025
ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, one of Northern Europe’s largest and most visited art institutions, has completed The Next Level, a major subterranean expansion centred around As Seen Below, a monumental Skyspace by renowned artist James Turrell. The project reinforces ARoS’ position as an international destination where art, architecture and experience converge.
The project marks the culmination of more than two decades of collaboration between ARoS, the City of Aarhus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen. Following the completion of the museum in 2004 and the addition of Olafur Eliasson’s iconic Your Rainbow Panorama in 2011, The Next Level adds a new chapter to the museum’s evolution through the integration of architecture, landscape and one of the most significant James Turrell installations realised within a museum setting.
At the heart of the expansion is The Dome, a 40-metre-wide subterranean structure housing As Seen Below, the largest Skyspace ever realised within a museum setting. Together with Salling Galleriet, a 1,000 m² underground exhibition space for site-specific installation art, the project expands ARoS’ curatorial possibilities while creating new ways for visitors to engage with art, light and space.
Throughout history, the dome has served as one of architecture’s most enduring and universal forms, symbolising gathering, civic identity and collective experience. At ARoS, The Dome reinterprets this architectural archetype within a contemporary museum context, creating a monumental setting for Turrell’s exploration of perception, light and sky.
Unlike a conventional museum extension, where architecture provides the framework for artworks, The Dome and James Turrell’s Skyspace were conceived and developed together over more than a decade. Created in close collaboration between artist, museum and architect, every aspect of the project – from proportions and materials to light, movement and atmosphere – was designed as part of a unified artistic and architectural experience. The architecture is not merely a setting for the artwork, but an essential component of it.
Embedded within the surrounding landscape, the extension emerges subtly from the redesigned Musikhusparken, continuing the use of clearly defined geometric forms that characterise the existing museum. While Salling Galleriet is located underground, The Dome is similarly embedded beneath the terrain and expressed above ground as a circular, grass-covered landform inspired by the region's ancient burial mounds. Together, these interventions establish new connections between museum, city and landscape.
The extension is characterised by a raw, industrial aesthetic with exposed fixtures and a deliberate interplay between rough and refined surfaces. Alternating between bare and painted finishes, the spaces heighten awareness of sound, light and spatial perception, creating a sensory atmosphere where architecture and artwork become inseparable.
By bringing architecture, artwork and landscape into a unified whole, The Next Level creates a new destination within ARoS and a distinctive setting for contemporary artistic expression. The project demonstrates how architecture can shape not only the experience of art, but become an integral part of the artwork itself.
