THE
ART
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 | Sol LeWitt's wall drawing, Consequence, in the Museum's second-floor lounge. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Consequence
After visitors have viewed the exhibitions chronicling the ghettos and the death camps, they enter the second-floor lounge to encounter a wall drawing by Sol LeWitt, entitled Consequence. Five large squares dominate the long wall.
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Each square is bordered in black, and contains a central gray square outlined with a band of white. In between the white and black contours are subtle colors of varying hues. LeWitt describes the square as the most stable and implacable of forms. The rhythmic pattern of squares within squares invites introspection, while the fields of color suggest absence — lives, families, and communities made vacant as a consequence of the Holocaust.
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 | Ellsworth Kelly's two-part work, Memorial, in the third-floor lounge. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Memorial
Visitors encounter Ellsworth Kelly's work in the third-floor lounge after touring the exhibition sequences that recount the escalation of Nazi violence between 1933 and 1939. In contrast to the dimly-lit exhibition spaces, the lounge is high-ceilinged and filled with light. On two opposing walls are Kelly's four wall sculptures, collectively entitled Memorial.
The largest of four pieces is a white fan-shaped panel that stretches almost 27 feet at its widest point and floats several inches from the wall. Opposite are three identical, evenly spaced white rectangles that also project several inches from the wall.
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Kelly's sculptures create a constant interplay of light and shadow that changes throughout the day. The artist has likened the sequence of three equal forms to memorial tablets that, in their anonymity, bear the names of all victims of the Holocaust.
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