Art Installation Transforms Elevator Encasement in NYC

Americas Society inaugurated Elena Damiani’s Zenith (2022) as a permanent art installation for the David Rockefeller Atrium of Americas Society’s NYC headquarters on Park Avenue. Zenith is an elevator encasement portraying the highest mountain in Ecuador: Chimborazo. Using archival imagery of the Chimborazo from the U.S. Geological Survey, the project shows the mountain printed on translucent fabric that wraps the elevator encasement and becomes the core of the space, visually engaging visitors as they enter. The Peruvian artist was inspired by the title of Americas Society’s first institutional memoir, A Hemispheric Venture. Zenith represents Americas Society’s mission of gathering artists from the Western Hemisphere and places the equator, specifically Chimborazo, as a meeting point and intersection for the Americas. Zenith was the winner of a 2014 contest among 17 different Latin American artists who designed commissions as part of an initiative to reinvigorate the lobby. In November, the organization held a ribbon-cutting event to celebrate the completion of a restoration of the landmark building.