The Long Night Shift

Exhibition. 5 works on view at ///event.highs.spicy, 4248 PALMETTO ST, Juniata Park. The wall is circular: walking in either direction returns to the title wall. Use Tab to move between works and Enter to read a work’s wall label. Arrow keys move along the wall.

Five works at a single point in the city, all acquired in May 2025; all of them have since been accessioned into the permanent collection. One commissioner: Police Department. The museum did not solicit any of them.

The works are exhibited in order of acquisition. Visitors will notice that the subject does not change; the museum invites them to consider what does.

1. The Long Night Shift, No. 1 — Automotive, stationary, sodium light, nocturnal installation. Accession 17590102. Acquired May 10, 2025. 495 days on view. The work is lit entirely from above and behind, so that the grey body reads less as a colour than as a series of pale highlights drawn along the hood and front fender. The clear amber of the headlamp assembly is the brightest note in the foreground, and the windshield carries two small paired stickers whose faces catch the same light. Behind it, a railing hung with small warm bulbs and the lit windows of the rowhouses establish the depth against which the work sits, unlit and closed. The museum preserves this piece as the first in a sequence in which the same form is recorded under changing conditions of light.
2. The Long Night Shift, No. 2 — Automotive, bronze paint, rainwater, stationary. Accession 17599745. Acquired May 14, 2025. 491 days on view. Rain has collected across the hood and roof in fine even beading, which flattens the bronze paint to a matte grey and sets the work apart from the wet asphalt beneath it. The near headlamp has clouded to amber while its lens remains uncracked, and the front bracket stands empty against the darker bumper trim. Read against the earlier work in the series, the posture is unchanged and only the weather has moved; the museum preserves this one for the way water records a surface that no longer sheds it.
3. The Long Night Shift, No. 3 — Automotive, bronze paint, rainwater, stationary. Accession 17602613. Acquired May 15, 2025. 490 days on view. Rain has settled across the bronze bodywork in a fine, even beading that catches the overcast light along the hood and front door, while the right headlamp lens has clouded to a dull amber that no longer matches its housing. The wheels remain inflated and the alloy faces clean, so the work's stillness registers less as collapse than as suspension. Read against its siblings in the series, this is the most composed of the group: the body sits square to the curb, the flowering bed above it trimmed and watered. The museum preserves it as the series' quietest passage, in which condition and upkeep occupy the same frame.
4. The Long Night Shift, No. 4 — Automotive, oxidising trim, rainwater, overcast exposure. Accession 17602617. Acquired May 15, 2025. 490 days on view. Rain has collected in fine beads across the hood and windshield, holding the flat grey daylight in a dull, even sheen that flattens the body's bronze paint toward the colour of wet stone. The headlamp lenses have clouded to an amber opacity, and the plate bracket on the front bumper stands empty and black against the lighter bumper cladding. Against the trimmed planter and swept steps immediately behind it, the vehicle reads as the one element of the composition that no one has attended to. Seen alongside its siblings in the series, this work is the wettest and the most settled.
5. The Long Night Shift, No. 5 — Automotive, oxidising trim, rainwater beading, residential exposure. Accession 17606463. Acquired May 19, 2025. 486 days on view. Rain has collected across the hood and glass in an even stipple, and the taupe paint reads darker along the horizontal planes than on the doors, where the finish has dulled toward a chalky matte. The near headlight has clouded to a milky amber that no longer matches its housing, the clearest sign of ageing in an otherwise composed body. Read against its siblings in the series, this work is distinguished by its forward angle and by the empty bumper bracket, which the museum regards as the composition's quietest passage.

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