Multiverse
Leo Villareal

Date: 2008
Location: Washington, DC

Multiverse is Leo Villareal’s installation at the National Gallery of Art. The piece has 45,000 LED nodes in a grid covering the metal ceiling of I.M. Pei’s 250 foot long underground corridor. The installation posed some difficult challenges: the LED string lights would need to snap into inconsistent metal grooves with round sidewalls, and thousands of feet of leader cables would need to be pulled through inaccessible spaces under the street slab without disturbing the hallway.

Parallel solved the problem by designing and furnishing molded polypropylene clips which conceal the cable and hold the LED nodes in place at the correct spacing. A number of mold modifications and material choice iterations were required to prevent the clips from distorting the flimsy ceiling slats. Parallel worked closely with the artist and the staff of the museum to develop the installation plan.