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Gabrielle Serriere, Senior Lighting Designer at ARCHITECTURE & LIGHT, a veteran designer in the luminaire with more than 11 years of experience shares in this Soraa blog entry how to light up art galleries. The product with LED could make the luminaire more suitable the lighting.
As a lighting designer, I see myself as a facilitator for art – one of the many team members enlisted to house a work of art. I join the artist, curators, Architect, venue’s operators, and the maintenance crew, in creating an environment best suited to any piece. In the case of a gallery or museum, often the space best suited is the most neutral with the simplicity of a clean-pressed white shirt and the technical prowess of a self-driving car.
Art is beautifully unpredictable, infinitely variable, delicate and powerful all at the same time – an exciting and overwhelming realm to showcase. What feeling does the art exude? What language does it speak? What story does it tell? Although it is crucial to take time to explore the origin and feeling of the piece, it is easy to get wrapped up in what the art is trying to say. As the person who chooses the lighting, I remind myself to step back and reduce the question to: “What light will make it visible?”
The shape, size and texture of the art inform immediate decisions in choosing lighting. If we’re talking a larger-than-life stone sculpture, it’s going to need quite a few sources coming from front, back, sides, and possibly floor. The distance of the light fixture to the art piece could quickly determine what power of lamp is required. During initial design phases, setting up several scale sectional drawings of the piece within the architecture is key to examining how different beam spreads might fall on the object. Imagine how a spotlight makes different shapes and sizes of light on a stage. From this beam of light, we can choose how soft or harsh the edges need to be. For the most part, the beam wants to be soft and fluid, almost indiscernible.
Until quite recently, the LED world was not capable of adequately presenting art. The appropriate products from which we can now choose are still slim – but high quality products do exist.
A private residence we designed the lighting for in Chicago in 2013 called for excellent color rendering for art throughout the house, and at the time, halogen lamps were still the only show in town. We left the door open for upgrades to LED later by choosing MR16 bi-pin base fixtures, which was luckily possible because the jurisdiction’s code permitted that option.
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