Installation Art: Art as Immersive Environment, From Duchamp to Saraceno (1913-Present)

In the summer of 2026, visitors to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin walked through the museum's sculpture garden and found themselves inside a cloud. The fog rolled in from opposite sides of the 90-meter-long garden, drifting between trees and sculptures, obscuring and revealing the glass-and-steel architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's building. The fog was not weather. It was art. Fujiko Nakaya, a Japanese artist who had been making fog sculptures since 1970, had installed nozzles throughout the garden that released pure water mist at regular intervals. The installation, on view through October 25, 2026, had no fixed form. Wind, humidity, temperature, and the movement of visitors continually altered its shape. Every activation was slightly different from the last. Read more at designboom.

Installation art is art that creates an environment the viewer enters rather than observes from a distance. Instead of a painting on a wall or a sculpture on a pedestal, an installation fills a room, a building, or an outdoor space. The viewer's physical presence and movement through the space are part of the work. Installation art can include objects, light, sound, video, performance, natural materials, or any combination of these. It emerged as a recognized art form in the 1960s and has become one of the dominant modes of contemporary art, practiced by artists worldwide and commissioned by museums, biennials, and public art programs.

This entry covers what installation art is, how it emerged from Dada and Happenings, which artists defined it, and how a form that was once considered not-art-at-all became central to the contemporary museum.

What Is Installation Art?

Installation art is art that is made for a specific space and that transforms that space into the artwork. The viewer enters the work rather than looking at it from outside. The space is not a container for the art. The space is the art. This means that installation art cannot be fully experienced through photographs or video. A photograph of an installation shows what it looks like, but it does not convey what it feels like to stand inside it.

The Tate defines installation art as "art that is made for a specific space and often involves the viewer's physical participation." Read more at Tate. MoMA describes installation as works that "engage the viewer's entire body and sense of space, often by filling a room or creating an environment." Read more at MoMA.

Installation art overlaps with immersive art, which takes the principle further by making the viewer's sensory experience the primary content. It relates to performance art, since many installations include live elements or require viewer participation. It connects to assemblage, since installations are often built from found objects and materials. It also connects to video art, as many installations use video projection as a primary element.

Origins and History

Dada and the Readymade (1913-1924)

The roots of installation art go back to Marcel Duchamp. In 1913, Duchamp mounted a bicycle wheel on a stool and placed it in his studio. It was not a sculpture in the traditional sense. It was an object placed in a space, and the relationship between the object and the space was part of the work. Duchamp's readymades, including Fountain (1917), a urinal submitted to an exhibition, challenged the convention that art must be made by the artist's hand. They also introduced the idea that the placement and context of an object could transform its meaning, which is a foundational principle of installation art.

Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau, begun in 1923 in his home in Hanover, was the first true installation. Schwitters transformed the rooms of his house into a sculptural environment, adding columns, grottos, and cavities made from found materials over many years. The Merzbau was not a collection of individual artworks. It was a single, room-sized work that the viewer entered. It was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, but it established the idea that art could be an environment, not just an object.

Happenings and Environments (1950s-1960s)

Allan Kaprow's Happenings of the late 1950s and 1960s were the direct precursor of installation art. Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) at the Reuben Gallery in New York placed audience members in a space where simultaneous performances occurred around them. Kaprow's Yard (1961) filled the Martha Jackson Gallery's backyard with automobile tires, inviting visitors to climb over them. These works broke down the separation between viewer and artwork that had defined the gallery experience. Kaprow coined the term "environment" to describe works that filled a space and required the viewer to enter them.

Claes Oldenburg's The Store (1961) was another early installation. Oldenburg rented a storefront on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and filled it with painted plaster and muslin sculptures of consumer goods: dresses, shoes, food, and signs. Visitors could walk through the store and buy the sculptures, which were priced like the real goods they represented. The Store blurred the line between art, commerce, and environment, and it established the principle that an installation could be a complete, self-contained world.

Installation Art as a Movement (1970s-1990s)

In the 1970s and 1980s, installation art became a recognized form. Dan Flavin created installations from fluorescent light tubes, arranging them in corridors and rooms to transform architectural space with colored light. James Turrell began creating light-filled rooms that eliminated depth perception, including the Ganzfeld series, where homogeneous fields of colored light made the walls disappear. Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974-1979) was a large-scale installation consisting of a triangular table with 39 place settings, each honoring a historical woman, surrounded by banners and tiles.

Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms, beginning with Phalli's Field (1965), used mirrors to create the illusion of infinite space, surrounding the viewer in a field of repeated forms. Kusama's rooms are among the most visited installations in the world, and they demonstrate how installation art can create an experience that is both physical and psychological: the viewer knows the room is small, but the mirrors make it feel endless.

In the 1980s and 1990s, installation art expanded to include site-specific works, land art, and social practice. Land art artists like Robert Smithson created installations in the landscape, such as Spiral Jetty (1970) in the Great Salt Lake. Installation art also began to address social and political issues. Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991) was a pile of 175 pounds of candy, corresponding to the weight of his partner Ross before he died of AIDS. Visitors were invited to take a piece of candy, and the pile diminished over time, a quiet but devastating installation about loss, participation, and the body.

Installation Art Today (2000s-2026)

Installation art is now one of the most common forms of contemporary art. Museums regularly commission large-scale installations, and biennials like the Venice Biennale are dominated by installation-based work. In 2026, installation art is visible in major exhibitions worldwide.

At Haus der Kunst in Munich, Tomas Saraceno presented Ancestral Futures, opening July 17, 2026, his largest exhibition ever staged in Germany. The show transforms the museum into an interconnected environment of floating sculptures, spiderweb architectures, and collaborative installations developed with Indigenous communities in northern Argentina. The exhibition includes Museo Aero Solar, an ever-evolving flying museum assembled from reused plastic bags by participants across six continents, and Cloud Cities: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, twelve floating cloud-like chambers on the east terrace. Read more at designboom.

At Bozar in Brussels, Delcy Morelos created Uterus in Uterus as part of the Bozar Monumental series, on view from June 28 to August 30, 2026. The installation is a 14-meter-long, 9-meter-wide structure built from hazel panels layered with red clay, sand, hay, and spices including cinnamon and cloves. The form evokes both a nest and a temple, drawing on wattle-and-daub techniques spanning the Americas, Africa, and Central Europe for over 6,000 years. The opening at the top allows sunlight from Bozar's glass roof to enter the work, creating a dialogue between the warm, organic installation and the museum's art deco architecture. Read more at Bozar.

At Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Lina Lapelyte's We Make Years Out of Hours, the second CHANEL Commission, transformed the museum's 2,500-square-meter Historic Hall into a shifting landscape of 400,000 wooden cubes. Twelve performers and visitors build temporary structures accompanied by sound, with voices filling the space with songs based on poems by 15 international authors. The work is on view from 2026 through January 2027. Read more at SMB.

At Castello di Rivoli in Italy, Cecilia Vicuna filled the Manica Lunga with a suspended quipu stretching more than 100 meters through the historic gallery. El glaciar ido (The Vanished Glacier) is built from bamboo canes and strips of untreated wool, including fleece from the indigenous Biellese sheep breed, evoking the glaciers that once shaped the Susa Valley. The installation connects Andean knowledge systems with ecological loss, treating fiber and wool as carriers of memory. Read more at designboom.

Key Artists and Pioneers

Allan Kaprow (1927-2006)

Kaprow coined the term "Happening" and created the first environments that viewers entered. Yard (1961) filled a gallery with tires. Words (1962) covered walls with paper scrolls bearing words and phrases, which visitors could rearrange. Kaprow's work broke down the barrier between artwork and audience, and his 1966 book Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings is the foundational text of installation art. Read more about his work in our entry on Happenings.

James Turrell (b. 1943)

Turrell creates installations from light and space. His Ganzfeld series uses homogeneous fields of colored light to eliminate depth perception, disorienting the viewer in a space that seems to have no boundaries. His Roden Crater project, under construction since 1977 inside an extinct volcano in Arizona, is a monumental installation that uses the crater's chambers and tunnels to frame the sky, sun, and stars. Turrell's work demonstrates that installation art can be made from nothing but light and architectural space.

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)

Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms are among the most visited installations in the world. Phalli's Field (1965) used mirrored walls and a floor covered in white phallic forms to create an illusion of endless repetition. Later rooms use LED lights reflected in mirrors to create the sensation of floating in infinite space. Kusama's installations demonstrate how mirrors, repetition, and enclosed space can create a powerful psychological experience. Read more about her work in our post on Yayoi Kusama and immersive art.

Fujiko Nakaya (1933-2024)

Nakaya was the first artist to use fog as a sculptural medium. Her first fog sculpture was created for Expo '70 in Osaka, where she enveloped the Pepsi Pavilion in a cloud of water mist. Nakaya's fog installations have no permanent form. Wind, humidity, temperature, and the movement of visitors continually alter their shape. Her 2026 installation at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin fills the museum's sculpture garden with slowly moving clouds of mist, creating an installation that is both visible and ephemeral.

Tomas Saraceno (b. 1973)

Saraceno creates installations that explore the relationship between art, architecture, and the environment. His Aerocene project proposes fossil-fuel-free flight using solar-powered balloons. His Cloud Cities installations create floating architectural environments inspired by cloud formations. His Arachnophilia project collaborates with spiders, presenting spiderwebs as architectural structures. Saraceno's 2026 exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Ancestral Futures, is his largest ever, transforming the museum into an interconnected ecosystem of floating sculptures, spiderweb architectures, and Indigenous knowledge.

Delcy Morelos (b. 1967)

Morelos creates multisensory installations using earth, clay, and natural materials. Her 2026 installation Uterus in Uterus at Bozar in Brussels is built from hazel panels layered with red clay, sand, hay, and spices. The form evokes both a bird's nest and a ritual structure, drawing on wattle-and-daub techniques that span the Americas, Africa, and Central Europe. Morelos's work demonstrates how installation art can engage the senses of smell and touch, not just sight, and how traditional building techniques can be transformed into contemporary art.

Installation Art and Related Terms

Installation art is closely related to immersive art, which extends the principle by making the viewer's sensory experience the primary content. It connects to Happenings and Fluxus, the participatory performance traditions that first broke down the barrier between audience and artwork. It overlaps with performance art in its use of live elements and viewer participation, and with assemblage in its use of found objects and materials. It relates to land art, which extends installation to the landscape, and to video art, as many installations use video projection. For broader context, read our post on installation art, or explore our guide to Yayoi Kusama and immersive art.

See Installation Art in Person

Installation art must be experienced in person. A photograph of an installation shows what it looks like, but it does not convey the physical, spatial, and sensory experience of being inside the work. Major museums with significant installation programs include the Tate Modern in London, MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.

In 2026, installation art can be seen at Haus der Kunst in Munich (Tomas Saraceno's Ancestral Futures, opening July 17), Bozar in Brussels (Delcy Morelos's Uterus in Uterus, through August 30), Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (Lina Lapelyte's We Make Years Out of Hours, through January 2027), Castello di Rivoli in Italy (Cecilia Vicuna's El glaciar ido), and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture, through October 25). For more on related practices, read our entries on immersive art and performance art, or explore our post on installation art.