The $8 billion renovation of New York’s LaGuardia Airport won’t be finished until 2025. But Terminal B is already complete, and it’s gorgeous.
The centerpiece is a spectacular new airborne sculpture called “Shorter Than the Day,” by artist Sarah Sze ’91, a professor of visual arts at Columbia, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, and a mother of two.
Sze said, “When I first proposed it, everyone was like, ‘Well, how are you gonna make this? How are you gonna make five tons look like nothing?'”
As you look inside, you see 1,500 photos of the New York sky, arranged from dawn, to midday, to dusk.
Sze said, “You’re watching the time of the sun going across the sky as you move, right? So, you’re tracing a day.”
Sze majored in architecture and painting at Yale, got her master’s degree from New York’s School of Visual Arts, and then she took off. She’s had exhibitions in the most hallowed halls of art, like the Venice Bieniale, the Whitney Biennial, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
You can read more about “Shorter Than the Day” at this recent CBS News article.