Refreshing the Playing Field: Robert Irwin’s 1977 Whitney installation
I was riding up the elevator in the Whitney Museum’s Marcel Breuer building in the spring of 1977, “minding my own business” as it were, and unaware of a forthcoming shock, when the large elevator doors opened. I was stunned and thrown backwards by a John Cage-type experience of nothing. At first, I timidly stood still, but then with the danger of a closing elevator door, I stepped out onto the fourth floor of the museum where I encountered Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1977) by Robert Irwin.
Source: brooklynrail.org