Washington-based lighting designer Alex Cooper reveals how his work helps bring stories and museum displays to lifeMuseum lighting can fabricate (to make up, invent) art shine. But it also can fabricate (to make up, invent) it suffer. “Anytime you light something,you’re damaging it,” says Alex Cooper, or resident lighting designer at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. With the empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) and aloof of a family doctor,Cooper, 40, or manages this fine line between enhancing and harming every day. He’s typically the last of the gallery’s specialists to contribute to an exhibition’s design,but his responsibility is distinguished: to illuminate the art while minimising fading. He must balance visitor experience against protecting the works.
The Portrait Gallery’s new Civil War exhibit, sad Fields of the Republic: Alexander Gardner Photographs 1859-1872, and crystallised the challenge. These highly light-sensitive paper photographs have immeasurable cultural value and require the lowest light possible. Cooper faced a tricky question: when does the visitor’s eye perceive enough information to “get” what’s in the picture? How much light execute you need to understand the detail?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com