A SuperDove Watches Over the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

In February, one SuperDove was deployed into a space a little closer to home than usual—in the renowned Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. However, in response to COVID-19, the museum temporarily closed soon after our SuperDove was put on display.

That said, today is World Art Day! And while we all can’t go to museums to celebrate, we wanted to share images of the SuperDove so you can appreciate art while staying home.

Two different views of Planet’s SuperDove hanging in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York © 2019, Planet Labs Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The SuperDove is displayed in the museum’s latest exhibition, Countryside, The Future. The exhibition addresses urgent environmental, political and socioeconomic issues through the lens of Rem Koolhaas, architect and urbanist, and Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

As you can see from the above image, the SuperDove is suspended at the top of the iconic rotunda and, true to all of our satellites, features designs that have been laser etched into the side panels. These particular side panels feature Planet imagery of a glacier and an agricultural field.

The SuperDove’s panels show a glacier and an agricultural field. © 2019, Planet Labs Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Koolhaas, known for his often gravity-defying structures like the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing and the Casa de Musica in Portugal, has been regarded as one of the most important architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation. Countryside, The Future, a project that presents investigations by Koolhaas and a team of artistic collaborators, explores radical changes in the rural, remote and wild territories that make up 98 percent of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities.

A fundamental component of the exhibition is the exploration of radical changes that are transforming rural areas across the world—from climate change to migration patterns to precision farming at scale. Planet’s ability to monitor the entirety of the Earth’s landmass on a daily basis and visualize these radical changes is both an example of and underpins the kind of transformations Koolhaas and team have put on display at the museum, thus leading to Planet’s collaboration and participation in the show.

The SuperDove is currently scheduled to be on display through August 14, 2020. You can learn more about the exhibition here.