An installation by Polish Jewish artist Agnieszka Kurant will adorn the famous curved facade of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

“The End of Signature,” a neon white projection created from the signatures of museum visitors with the help of a computer program, is an evolving light sculpture that Kurant calls an ode to the disappearing art of handwriting. The “collective signature” will be visible on the Manhattan building at night, starting Friday, June 5.

“It’s like the signature of an invisible hand of a collective body,” said Kurant, a self-described post-conceptual artist now based in New York.

Her work will also be on display inside the Guggenheim: “Phantom Library” comprises 112 fictional books lined up on a shelf. Kurant has given the books physicality, complete with ISBN numbers and bar codes.

Invisibility and the power of what cannot be seen are constants for Kurant, who learned as a teenager that her mother’s family was Jewish. Kurant’s maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and her mother, who spent most of her life in communist Poland, had been afraid to tell her daughter the truth. — jta