Louise Nevelson

Dawn's Wedding Chapel II
1959

One of the foremost American sculptors of the twentieth century, Louise Nevelson is renowned for her large, monochromatic wood sculptures. Her largest works, or “environments,” as they are often called, are assemblages consisting of hundreds of boxes filled with objects scavenged from the streets of New York City, and painted a uniform color (white, gold, or, most commonly, black). Dawn’s Wedding Chapel II includes elements from one such environment, titled Dawn’s Wedding Feast, an installation of Nevelson’s first white sculptures, which she created for a 1959 exhibition. The work was, in Nevelson’s words, “a white wedding cake, a wedding mirror. . .a pillow. . .a kind of fulfillment, a transition to marriage with the world.” After the exhibition closed, she reassembled individual elements to form several discrete sculptures, of which Dawn’s Wedding Chapel II is but one example.

Not on view

Date
1959

Classification
Sculpture

Medium
Painted wood

Dimensions
Overall (Including base): 115 7/8 × 83 1/2 × 10 1/2in. (294.3 × 212.1 × 26.7 cm) Base: 6 × 83 1/2 × 10 1/2in. (15.2 × 212.1 × 26.7 cm)

Accession number
70.68a-m

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc.

Rights and reproductions
© Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/2026