Louise Nevelson created her wall-size constructions from cast-off wood and metal scavenged from the streets of New York City. Nevelson’s “Sky Cathedral” sculptures were inspired by diverse sources that included ancient Mayan temples, Gothic European cathedrals, and Manhattan’s urban landscape, which she described “as a great big sculpture.” The boxes of fragments in "Sky Cathedral’s Presence I" contain enigmatic signs and symbols that are open to any number of interpretations.

Nevelson linked her first use of coffin-like black boxes to the trauma inflicted by World War II, in which her son served. The works in Nevelson’s “Sky Cathedral” series address the issue of religious belief in an existential age wrought by the horrors of war, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. Balancing fragmentation and unity, they reflect our perennial desire for something larger than ourselves—a mythical and mysterious “presence” that is spiritually sustaining.