Artist Kelly Akashi has been selected to create a site-specific outdoor sculpture for the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), set to open in fall 2027. Akashi will visit the College throughout the next academic year to develop the work in collaboration with architects, landscape designers, and members of the College community. The work will be installed in the museum’s east meadows, facing toward campus. Official renderings of the piece have not yet been created, but it will largely be inspired by the plantlife and ecology of the Berkshires.
According to Director of WCMA Pamela Franks, the piece is closely tied to the museum’s new location at a major entrance to campus. “We want [the sculpture] to be a really welcoming presence and really signal the importance of art for our College and our region,” Franks said in an interview with the Record. “And a huge part of that has been the desire to make sure that art is the first thing that people see when they see the museum.”
Dan Byers, WCMA’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art, led the process of choosing the artist from a list of roughly 50. Following visits to installations of each artist’s work, Byers and his colleagues narrowed the list to three. WCMA invited the finalists to campus to present their work and meet with students, faculty, and museum affiliates. The final decision to select Akashi as the artist was made in collaboration with the College’s Public Art Committee, which includes members of the faculty, student body, and the College’s landscapers.
While putting together her proposal, Akashi reached out to Professor of Biology Joan Edwards and Hopkins Forest Manager Elise Leduc-Fleming to gather information about the ecology and natural history of the site outside of the new WCMA building.
“[Her commitment to reaching out to faculty] was very exciting for us because of the museum’s priority to bring art and nature and architecture together through the design and, of course, our teaching priority to be sure that we’re sharing art and the collection through a cross-disciplinary lens,” Franks said.
Akashi specializes in sculpture that explores the impermanence of the natural world, often drawing on plant and geological forms. She initially trained as an analog photographer. In her sculptural work, she frequently uses materials such as glass, wax, bronze, and stone, sometimes creating casts of her own body. In her exhibition Encounters, she integrated references to her father’s incarceration at an internment camp during World War II, using these materials to create a physical representation of memory and loss through casts of her hands as well as fossils and stones. Much of her work pairs fragile, translucent elements, incorporating botanical imagery.
Akashi received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art & Design in 2006 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California in 2014. She also studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt, Germany in 2010. In 2025, she worked as an artist in residence at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state.
Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at institutions in Milan and Seattle. In 2024, her work was part of a traveling show that began at the San Jose Museum of Art and later appeared in Seattle and San Diego. Her work is held in the collections of several major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
One of her most recent sculpture commissions, Monument (Altadena), presents a glass chimney modeled after what was left of her home studio following the Altadena fires in 2025. The sculpture is currently at the Whitney Museum’s outdoor terrace and will remain until Aug. 2026.
“Kelly’s project engaged so many different disciplines, both in academic disciplines within the interdisciplinary context of Williams’ liberal arts focused education, but also just broader ways of being in the world,” Byers said.
According to Byers, Akashi will work closely with the museum’s building and landscape teams to determine how the sculpture will be integrated into the site, including its placement, materials, and surrounding plantings. The museum also plans to organize opportunities for students and faculty to engage directly with her work, including class visits, and a public presentation of the proposal once it is further developed.
“We’re hoping [there will be opportunities] for students just to get to know Kelly and her work and her working process,” Byers said. “She’s using scientific imaging in interesting ways in these works, so there may be opportunities for classes that are using those processes to interact with her.”
The new commission continues WCMA’s commitment to bringing outdoor artwork to campus. Since 2001, Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture, titled Eyes, has become a landmark on campus outside of the current WCMA building. The artwork will remain in place after the new WCMA’s opening.
Franks hopes the new commission will build on WCMA’s existing outdoor works and their impact on campus life. “I just love our outdoor art on campus. [Eyes] is a very particular presence on campus, and gives our campus a real sense of character,” Franks said. “Kelly Akashi will definitely add to that.”
