NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — MASS MoCA, the nation’s largest contemporary art space, is getting even bigger.

On Sunday, Nov. 16, the museum known for its art experiments will unwrap an extraordinary art experience — one mile of wall space covered with 100 geometric drawings by the late Sol LeWitt, a founder of conceptual and minimalist art.

“Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” is housed in Building No. 7, a 27,000-square-foot space that was renovated especially for the exhibit and is opening to the public for the first time. The LeWitt installation, which will inhabit Building No. 7 for 25 years, expands the MASS MoCA galleries by 25 percent.

Conceived five years ago and designed by LeWitt before his death at age 78 in April 2007, the installation is a collaboration between MASS MoCA, Yale University Art Gallery and Williams College Museum of Art. The project began last April and continued through September, with 60 artists, assistants and interns drawing from designs that LeWitt created from 1968 to 2007.

For the visitor, the installation is a LeWitt shrine, where body, mind and spirit are totally immersed in waves of artworks that blend painting, architecture, design and conceptual art.

Spread over three floors, the long-term exhibit winds through a maze of wall panels dividing large rooms that have brick walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. From a distance, one sees big, sweeping geometric patterns, some in black and white, others in primary colors. Go up close and you see the bumpy texture of crayon or graphite applied directly to a wall.

Creating plans

LeWitt believed that the conception of an artwork was more important than the finished product. He created the detailed plans for his intricate, mathematical drawings but other people executed the works.

While there is a well-traveled trail of LeWitt drawings in museums across New England, the MASS MoCA installation is the largest LeWitt exhibit ever mounted.

“This would be the mecca,” says Katherine Myers, MASS MoCA’s director of marketing and public relations.

To access Building No. 7, visitors revisit the excitement of MASS MoCA’s grand opening in 1999, as they take a journey through undiscovered industrial space in the sprawling, 19th-century former factory.

From the main lobby, a climb up a short staircase brings one to an elevated bridge or tunnel. Purposely untouched during the renovation, the walls of the passage are made of rough corrugated metal, and window slits throw puddles of light into the dim space. Peering through one of these portholes, you may recognize the courtyard where outdoor parties and concerts were held in the museum’s first years.

From the bridge, the next stop is a small room with panels and information about the LeWitt project and wide windows that overlook the 13-acre MASS MoCA campus and the Housatonic River.

“We’ve opened up views we haven’t had before,” says Myers.

There’s even a tiny balcony that juts out into Building No. 5, the largest single-floor gallery, offering another vantage point for the current Jenny Holzer installation, which closes Nov. 16 and the next mega-work, by British artist Simon Starling, which opens Dec. 13.

Free to wander

Once they reach the LeWitt exhibit, viewers may wander as they please, losing themselves in the different patterns that unfold along the walls. (Although the 100 drawings span one mile, that distance is actually composed of many connecting walls.)

Four years ago, LeWitt visited the space, and then worked on the design for the installation using a model of the building until his death, one year before the project was launched. The idea for the retrospective came from Yale University, after LeWitt committed many of his drawings to that institution, but there wasn’t enough space to show a large number of them at the same time.

“They’re really math problems. People are interested in the puzzles behind them,” says Myers, stopping in front of a painting that looks like a Rubik’s Cube, with blocks in four primary colors arranged so that no color block touches another of the same color. Other designs are precisely calibrated to fit the wall, with directions for the person executing the drawing to start the design a specific number of inches from his or her left shoulder.