Japanese-born artist On Kawara’s work deals with concepts including consciousness, arbitrariness, and human experience. Kawara is best known for his Today series, comprised of thousands of individual paintings known as Date Paintings that depict in white paint the day, month, and year in which each was completed against a monochromatic background. Moon Landing, 1969, on long-term view in Room 3 of the Pavilions, records three key dates of the Apollo 11 space mission: the day the shuttle took off from Earth, the day it landed on the Moon, and the day astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon’s surface. For Kawara, making a Date Painting was an act of meditation, a reliable, daily repetitive practice in a world filled with uncertainty.

–Max Levin, from the Glenstone Field Guide