The Lighting Of A Great Museum

Author David Saunders, former keeper of conservation and scientific research at the British Museum, explores how to balance the conflicting goals of visibility and preservation under a variety of conditions. Beginning with the science of how light, color, and vision function and interact, he proceeds to offer detailed studies of the impact of light on a wide range of objects, including paintings, manuscripts, textiles, bone, leather, and plastics. With analyses of the effects of light on visibility and deterioration, Museum Lighting provides practical information to assist curators, conservators, and other museum professionals in making critical decisions about the display and preservation of objects in their collections.

From Darkness to Light explores from a variety of angles the subject of museum lighting in exhibition spaces in America, Japan, and Western Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Written by an array of international experts, these collected essays gather perspectives from a diverse range of cultural sensibilities. From sensitive discussions of Tintoretto's unique approach to the play of light and darkness as exhibited in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, to the development of museum lighting as part of Japanese artistic self-fashioning, via the story of an epic American painting on tour, museum illumination in the work of Henry James, and lighting alterations at Chatsworth (to name only a few topics) this book is a treasure trove of illuminating contributions. The collection is at once a refreshing insight for the enthusiastic museum-goer, who is brought to an awareness of the exhibit in its immediate environment, and a wide-ranging scholarly compendium for the professional who seeks to proceed in their academic or curatorial work with a more enlightened sense of the lighted space.

Vast sums of money spent to design, construct, and maintain museum additions demand great accountability of museum leaders and design professionals towards visitors and employees. Museum visitors today come not only to view works of art, but also to experience museum architecture itself, resulting in most major cities competing to build new museum additions or new museum buildings to become world class tourist destinations. Shedding New Light on Art Museum Additions presents post-occupancy evaluations of four high-profile museums and their additions in the United States and helps museum stakeholders understand their successes, shortcomings, and how their designs affect both visitors and employees who use them every day. The book helps decision-makers assess the short-term and long-term impacts of future proposals for new museum additions and illuminates the critical importance of investing in employee work environments, and giving serious consideration to lighting, wayfinding, accessibility, and the effects of museum fatigue that arise from the lack of public amenities. Museum leaders, curators, architects, designers, consultants, patrons of the arts and museum visitors will find this book to be a useful resource when planning and evaluating new building additions.

Conservation scientists in museums and galleries have a clear understanding of the damage that light can inflict on an object, but what of the designers that create exhibitions to display these precious items? Light for Arts Sake provides a basis for a level of professional expertise for lighting practice in museums. Rather than portraying conservation and display as having diametrically opposed objectives, the central concept is that the interaction of light and art media is the source for both the visual experience and the degradation of the artwork. Optimal solutions derive from understanding and controlling the interaction process, and the need is for the level of understanding among lighting professionals to be brought closer to that found among conservation scientists.

American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London’s South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.

Museums throughout the world have common needs and face common challenges. Keeping up-to-date with new ideas and changing practice is challenging for small and medium-sized museums where time for reading and training is often restricted. This new edition of Museum Basics has therefore been produced for the many museums worldwide that operate with limited resources and few professional staff. The comprehensive training course provided within the book is also suitable for museum studies students who wish to gain a full understanding of work within a museum. Drawing from a wide range of practical experience, the authors provide a basic guide to all aspects of museum work, from audience development and education, through collections management and conservation, to museum organisation and forward planning. Organised on a modular basis with over 110 Units, Museum Basics can be used as a reference work to assist day-to-day museum management and as the key textbook in pre-service and in-service training programmes. It is designed to be supplemented by case studies, project work and group discussion. This third edition has been fully updated and extended to take account of the many changes that have occurred in the world of museums in the last five years. It includes over 100 new diagrams supporting the text, a glossary, sources of information and support as well as a select bibliography. Museum Basics is also now supported by its own companion website providing a wide range of additional resources for the reader.