Chasing Rainbows
- Kristine Schomaker
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Lacey Argus
It's easy to miss the bite-sized rainbows orbiting around the travertine surfaces of The Getty Center's Main Entrance. Some people breeze by them, eager to visit the various galleries that lie just beyond them. Others dash through them as they rush into a crowded bathroom line. Some briefly glance upward at the towering glass light prisms suspended from the atrium enclosing the space. But not children. If you spend an afternoon amongst these rainbows, you're sure to notice children don't miss them. They run up to them, jump in them, as if they were a portal to a multicolored world. They create shadow art of bunnies and hearts within their rainbow streaks. They pull their parents closer, excitedly pointing.
Charles Ross: Spectrum 14 is part of The Getty's Rotunda Commission, a series where The Getty invites various artists to create custom installations for the museum's main entrance. Artist, sculptor, and architect Charles Ross designed 14 eight-foot light prisms to hang from various parts of the ceiling. Each acrylic prism is placed to highlight a precise time, day, and point in the year. The prisms cast a wild rainbow spectrum light that dances across the space, shifting with the sun's positioning.
Ross is known for incorporating natural elements into his work. With an education in mathematics and fine arts, Ross explores themes of cycles, rituals, and connections to nature. As a friendly gallery attendant, Tom, wisely pointed out, the first step to enjoying Ross's work is presence. Tom has spent hours, days, weeks witnessing the evolution of these dazzling rainbows. He watches them move from one corner of the room to another, he takes note of the minute seasonal changes that shift the rainbow's trajectory, and someday he will witness the light prisms removed, as the gallery itself prepares for its next adventure.
Ross's work allowed me to consider my own relationship to the cycles that encompass my being. One of the most apparent of these cycles is conceptual time, colloquially known as life and death. Being a 24-year-old woman born into a generation where the impacts and legitimacy of climate change have become widespread, I have effectively been keeping a "doomsday" countdown in my head since birth. This feeling is otherwise known as ecological grief — distress and sadness over environmental destruction.
Spectrum 14 invites the viewer to more mindfully witness or even interact with the cycles unraveling around them. The light prisms, which capture and sculpt the sun-beams around them, birth an attention-grabbing array of colors, a shift of perspective, turning one thing into another. Fitting, as The Getty's entrance marks the beginning of each visitor's journey. Soon they will be transported by the art hanging on the museum's walls. What shift of perspective awaits them?
What I found in Spectrum 14 was the opportunity to encounter the truth of my own experience — one small lifeform in a constantly expanding universe. To watch the rainbows shift across the room, sit in the passing time, and meet each emotion that comes up with it. To understand that I am irrevocably tied to the atmosphere above me, and although that might be complicated at times, it is also beautiful.
As I continued my afternoon, sitting in The Getty's Main Entrance, I noticed that although it was the children who most enthusiastically interacted with the rainbows, knowingly or not, adults regularly altered their pathway to walk through the shining rainbows reflected on the glassy floor. As if there was a child inside them still searching for rainbows, still leading their path.
One of the perspective shifts Ross's work offers is a reflection of ourselves. What do we see when we encounter a rainbow? What do the children so seemingly enthralled with them see? Perhaps Tom gave me the answer when I first passed through The Getty's towering glass door: presence. The rainbows continue their orbit regardless of who's watching them, but what a wonderful choice it is to stop and enjoy them.
Charles Ross: Spectrum 14 is a semi-permanent and ongoing exhibition at The Getty Center, set to run through early Fall 2026. You can learn more about Charles Ross's work at charlesrossstudio.com.
Lacey Argus is a queer writer and educator living in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on art, queer theory, and the Gothic. Most days she enjoys reading fantasy books, walking her beagle, or burning baked goods.
