In the late 1950s, even before government agencies decided to fund public art at new construction projects, Western Washington University started its Outdoor Sculpture Collection—which grew into the most important in the state, rivaled now only by what you find at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park.

It includes minimalist, totemic, process-based, earthworky, feminist, poppy, philosophical, enigmatic, great-big-bronze, and disembodied sculptures and installations by artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Donald Judd, Mark di Suvero, Richard Serra, Alice Aycock, Nancy Holt, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris (this one, a mysterious rising of steam from an otherwise plain lawn, is my current favorite).

And recently—"since sculpture is an expansive medium"—Western has decided to expand the range of its Outdoor Sculpture Collection indoors—a move that will probably, eventually, be accompanied by a name change, adds curator Sarah Clark-Langager.

The first major commission in this direction is Do Ho Suh's installation Cause & Effect, to be located in the Academic Instructional Center West building. Construction begins in mid-December. The installation—a tornado of orangey acrylic resin bodies hanging on strands attached to a stainless steel plate at the top—will be about 19 feet high and 8 feet across. Each little body is about 5 and a half inches high.

Here's how you know Do Ho Suh. Cause & Effect continues his theme of the multitude, seen here and here. See many more of his works here (worth the click). I'm attaching another image of Cause & Effect in Seoul on the jump (see the little bodies! They remind me of Dan Webb's 2005 piece in the Bank of America Tower downtown).