A man sits on a white bench as rainbows of light from Charles Ross's prism installation cross the surface around him

Charles Ross: Spectrum 14

Last chance10 September 2024 – 29 November 2026Free

A calibrated array of prisms casts shifting bands of spectral light across the Museum rotunda, tracking the sun's changing arc through the seasons; commissioned for PST ART.

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On now All of November 2026

Fourteen clear Plexiglas prisms, each about eight feet long, hang under the skylights of the Museum Entrance Hall, and you barely see them. When the sun hits them, rainbows spill across the floor, the stairwell and the walls, wide enough to stand or lie in. In the afternoon they climb the marble and break into paler bands of pink and lilac.

Ross angled each prism for a particular time of day and year, so the hall never looks the same twice. Linger and you can watch a band creep across the floor; come back in a month and it lands somewhere else. Ross says to watch for a spectrum sliding straight down one of the columns, or two crossing and mixing. It's the rare Getty artwork you're invited to lie down in.

It's the first room you walk into, free with the timed reservation (parking is paid), and it needs direct sun. Ross describes it on the GettyGuide app, stop 17. It closes 29 November.

Look for

The floor rainbows
Look for wide bands of spectrum on the Entrance Hall floor, big enough to stand or lie in, sliding slowly as the Earth turns.
The afternoon walls
Later in the day the spectra climb the marble walls and show subtler bands of colour, including light pink and lilac.
A spectrum down a column
Ross's own tip: every so often a band of colour runs vertically down one of the hall's columns.
Crossing spectra
Occasionally one rainbow on the floor passes through another, and you can watch the two sets of colours combine and change.
The prisms overhead
Look up at the skylights for the fourteen clear acrylic prisms, nearly invisible, each angled to catch the sun at a set time of day and year.