Akhob by James Turrell

In 2013, Louis Vuitton commissioned a permanent James Turrell installation to occupy a hidden space on the fourth floor of its City Center store. Called “Akhob,” a word from Egypt’s Amarna period supposedly meaning “pure water,” the piece consists of circular openings leading into two huge chambers filled with slowly changing, rotating light. Turrell calls these sort of iconic installations, for which he’s famous, “ganzfelds” or “light fields.” The effect created is one of giving your eyes a gentle, soothing bath in the most brilliant colors imaginable. Vibrant hues shift imperceptibly from one to another, bleeding in and out of each other on a cycle that lasts 24 minutes.