One of the artist’s most celebrated sculptures, Hinoki, 2007, will be presented as a standalone installation, inviting sustained engagement with a landmark work of contemporary art. 

POTOMAC, MD, October 7, 2026 – Glenstone Museum is pleased to announce a new installation by Charles Ray (b. 1953). Opening Friday, October 23 in Room 8 of the Pavilions building, the installation marks the seventh chapter in Glenstone's ongoing collaboration with Ray, a nearly decade-long partnership that has produced a series of focused exhibitions exploring questions central to the artist's work. 

For the first time, a single artwork will be presented in the room. The meticulously carved Hinoki, 2007, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, measures more than 32 feet in length and is widely regarded as one of the defining works of Ray's career. Due to its scale, complexity, and fragility, the sculpture has been on view only once outside of the Art Institute since it entered its collection in 2007. 

Hinoki is a faithful recreation of a fallen tree Ray discovered along California's central coast. Drawn to the form, he transported the log to his Los Angeles studio, where silicone molds were made of its surfaces, hollowed trunk, and details. From those molds, Ray produced a fiberglass pattern that he sent to master woodcarver Yuboku Mukoyoshi in Osaka, Japan. For the next four years, Mukoyoshi and a team of apprentices carved the work from hinoki, the Japanese cypress. Through this careful translation from toppled tree to carved sculpture, Hinoki prompts reflection on permanence, change, and the relationship between the natural and human-made worlds. 

"Hinoki is among Charles Ray's most celebrated achievements, a profoundly moving meditation on time, materiality, making, and preservation," said Emily Wei Rales, director and co-founder of Glenstone. "Through the extraordinary skill and devotion of everyone involved in its creation, the sculpture invites us to see renewal where we might otherwise see decay." 

Unlike previous presentations in Room 8, which brought together multiple sculptures in dialogue, this installation centers on a single work. Installed personally by the artist, the focused presentation invites visitors to spend time with Hinoki's remarkable scale, intricate surfaces, and layered process of making, offering an extended encounter with one of the defining sculptures of Ray's career. 

"Hinoki distills many of the questions that have animated Charles Ray's practice for decades: how sculpture can transform our understanding of an object, how scale shapes experience, and how perception shifts through sustained looking," said Nora Severson Cafritz, Senior Director of Collections at Glenstone. "What appears at first to be a downed tree gradually reveals itself to be an extraordinary feat of observation and craftsmanship. The longer one spends with the work, the more it unsettles distinctions between object and image, nature and artifice, challenging us to reconsider what, exactly, we are seeing." 

About Glenstone 

Glenstone, a museum of modern and contemporary art, is integrated into more than 300 acres of gently rolling pasture and unspoiled woodland in Montgomery County, Maryland, less than 15 miles from the heart of Washington, DC. The museum provides a serene, contemplative setting for experiencing iconic works of art and architecture within a natural environment. 2026 marks Glenstone’s 20th anniversary as a public institution and the opening of the Charles Gwathmey-designed Gallery building. The museum campus includes extensive grounds featuring outdoor sculptures and trails, two art exhibition buildings, the Gallery (2006) and the Pavilions (2018), as well as two dining options and bookstore. 

Admission is always free. Glenstone is open Thursdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. year-round. Tickets are required and can be reserved at www.glenstone.org. 

Media Contact: press@glenstone.org