Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to announce The Moon's Eyelid, a permanent site-specific sculpture by Alyson Shotz for NYU Langone Art Program and Collection. Shotz's monumental work spans four stories of the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Pavilion, on NYU Langone Health's main campus. Comprised of welded aluminum and dichroic acrylic, The Moon's Eyelid is Shotz's first major commission in New York City.

LERA+ provided value engineering services to optimize the sculpture’s structure and placement after preliminary designs revealed excessive deflections. Taking the title from a line of poetry by Adrienne Rich, Shotz conceived of this sculpture as an ellipse, the same shape as the orbit of the moon around the earth, and the earth around the sun. Shotz's ellipse, however, is folded unto itself, its structure a latticework that absorbs and refracts the sun streaming into the Kimmel Pavilion from broad windows to the North and West.

The angle and color of the reflections subtly change through the day and seasons, making the rotation of the earth and its journey around the sun visibly apparent. The Moon's Eyelid is part of the NYU Langone Art Program and Collection, which integrates artwork into the healing environments at NYU Langone Health's facilities.