HOWLAND — One doesn’t need a telescope to view Medici Museum of Art’s “Cosmic Galaxy.” Anyone driving past the museum on East Market Street can see it.

New York artist Abby Modell and a five-person team arrived at the museum late Tuesday morning to install the work in the glass-walled gallery facing the thoroughfare.

Katelyn Amendolara-Russo, executive director of Medici, said she connected with Modell through sculptor Carole Feuerman, who’s exhibited her own work at Medici and donated the 6-foot-tall, one-ton sculpture “Poseidon” that’s on display on Medici’s front lawn.

Feuerman also co-curated the current exhibition “ZODIAC: The Mysterious Power of the Creative,” which runs through Jan. 11, 2026, at Medici.

“She (Modell) came out at the end of July and installed a beautiful piece titled ‘Celestial Waterfall’ that’s in the back wing (as part of ‘ZODIAC’),” Amendolara-Ruso said. “She saw the front window, where the Pierre Soulages once was, and saw it as a perfect opportunity to custom make a work that’s vibrant in color.”

The gallery was built in 2010, when the building was the Butler Institute of American Art’s Trumbull Branch, to display a 20-feet-wide-and-14-feet-high mural by 20th-century French artist Pierre Soulages. After Foundation Medici severed ties with the Butler and created Medici Museum of Art, the Butler won a court battle to retain custody of the Soulages mural and built an addition in 2023 to its Youngstown museum to display it.

Because of the direct sunlight in that Medici gallery, Amendolara-Russo said works on paper and other pieces that could fade or deteriorate from the ultraviolet rays can’t be displayed there. However, glass is a perfect medium for the space.

“Cosmic Galaxy” is made up of 34 different glass modules of varying colors and techniques. Around them will be between 14 and 20 smaller silver spheres creating a celestial trail.

“This was completely designed for the museum, for this space,” Modell said. “As an artist, my work progresses, and this has all the new techniques that I’m using as an artist.

“This is all hand-blown glass. Each piece is made one at a time. The color palette was chosen very carefully. I was a fashion designer in a prior career, and I love working with color, which you can see. So all the colors were picked very carefully to get this ombre, which means that it flows from one color into the other like a rainbow.”

Amendolara-Russo added, “When you see the pieces, the finishes on each piece of glass is unique. How many hours and days must have been spent just to achieve the color palette, the gradient of the rainbow within this work?

“It aligns with Medici’s mission to provide the community with innovative and contemporary works of art. And I think Abby Modell represents that brilliance and innovation within contemporary glass works of our time.”

Modell’s work has been exhibited at the National Library Museum in Philadelphia and can be seen in the corporate headquarters of Morgan Stanley in New York City and the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami. Her collection has been represented at such fine art fairs as Art Palm Beach (Florida), Hamptons (New York) Fine Art Fare, Scope Miami, SOFA Chicago and the Architectural Digest Design Show in New York City.

For “Cosmic Galaxy,” an actual-size chart mapped out where each module was to go, but as Modell’s installers hung the pieces, she experimented with different placements. The celestial trail pieces weren’t finalized until all the larger modules were installed.

The work is on indefinite loan to the museum, but Modell said it is for sale.

“I’m hoping that when all the viewers drive by the museum, they look at this and think, ‘What is that? I have to see it,'” Modell said. “I want them to come in, and then they will get to explore all the other beautiful pieces here. When they come closer, they can see all the beautiful finishes that I’ve done, and all the textural elements and the variation of the colors, which is really what this piece is mostly about. It’s all about color.”

While the work can be viewed in the museum starting today and is visible to passersby, a formal dedication is planned later this year at a date to be determined.

“I think this piece welcomes our community with light, hope and beauty before visitors even step inside,” Amendolara-Russo said. “It’s transforming the exterior as well as the interior of the museum.”