Our latest project with 59Productions, Oman & the World opened at the Royal Opera House in Muscat on the 1st June.
This wonderfully rich and immersive exhibition ‘charts the story of music in a rich and immersive journey from sounds appearing in nature, through the science and techniques of instrumentation, to the role music plays in our societies and inside each of us’ (59Productions). Music was a key interest of the late Sultan of Oman, and the exhibition is a tribute to his passion for musical arts; not only those of Oman, but also internationally & how he was keen to bring world-class musicians to Oman to perform in the Opera House.
As part of the exhibition team, DHA were tasked with creating all of the object, graphic and show sequence lighting across a number of spaces to bring the exhibition to life. We worked closely with the exhibition designers, plus the sound designers (Coda to Coda) to ensure the lighting was tightly integrated with all of the design elements. As the architectural spaces were so carefully detailed, standard track solutions were rejected in favour of a carefully plotted ceiling array that made use of a beautiful ceiling design that also functioned as an acoustic panel system – very important in a space that featured music and sound throughout.
As expected from 59Productions theatrical focus, two key immersive spaces were created for the exhibition as the first and last visitor experiences: here DHA worked with the audio-visual and sound designers to create show sequences that supported the content, changing the lighting to support the audio environment.
We are delighted that no less than three of our recent projects have been shortlisted in the Best Permanent Gallery category at the Museum + Heritage Awards for 2022.
Each project (the Second World War & Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museum, the Wordsworth Trust Museum in Grasmere & the Manchester Jewish Museum) have quite distinct content and tone, but all represent the absolute best in contemporary museum design, and we are pleased to have had a role in their creation. We particularly like to thank the designers for each project: Casson Mann for the Holocaust Galleries, Ralph Applebaum Associates for the Second World War Galleries, All Things Studio for the Manchester Jewish Musem and Nissen Richards for the Wordsworth Trust Museum for making us part of their design teams.
Beyond the designers, we worked with an excellent team of curators, conservators, interpretation consultants & contractors across all of these projects, so it is fantastic to see their work being recognised in this way. The awards will be presented on 11th May at an actual, live ceremony, so it’s even more good news that industry events are finally returning to normal!
The British Museum’s latest major exhibition, Nero: The Man Behind the Myth recently opened to great response in the press. The major reviews were gathered together by The Week, and they show just how fantastically well the exhibition has been received: the show has been described as a ‘wonderfully evocative exhibition’ which makes ‘history feel vividly alive’ (The Times), whereas the Telegraph also called it ‘evocative’ but when on to describe the overall experience as ‘wildly exciting’ & a ‘provocative, brilliant polemic’
DHA worked closely with Drinkall Dean and Lombaert Studio to create a theatrical setting for this showman of the Roman world, including the use light projections, gobo textures and animated light sequences, with all objects beautifully and carefully lit.
The exhibition is open now at the British Museum until 24th October 2021. Tickets may be booked through the British Museum’s website for the exhibition here.
A perfect example of how lighting can add enormous value to a gallery project can be seen at our recent work on the V&A Museum’s series of three linked gallery spaces that form the Design 1900 – Now collection. The galleries have recently been refurbished to great effect & the process was recently featured in the BBC2/Blast series, Secrets of the Museum.
Project designer, David Robertson, worked with the V&A’s lead curators, Corinna Gardner & Johanna Agerman Ross to re-light and refresh the spaces, originally designed in the 1980s. The challenge was to retain all of the cases and setworks, which featured a lighting system so dated – relying mainly on halogen sources – that it could easily have featured as one of the gallery’s exhibits. An initial attempt had been made to replace some of the halogen with retrofit LED lamps, but the results were inconsistent: the lighting, from simple overhead lightboxes, was bland and in many cases had failed, leading to a patchy and dull appearance.
Gallery 74: Cases before refurbishment
The first part of the refurbishment was to understand what the museum needed: a flexible system that could light large objects, down to tiny pieces, creating modelling on the three-dimensional pieces, but equally able to light large flat pieces, such as signage and wallpaper samples.
DHA proposed the existing egg-crate louvred light boxes were upgraded with a high-quality LED behind a diffusing acrylic for a fresher, more contemporary feel. The LED sources were chosen for their colour performance and quality; dimming was introduced so that light levels could be varied from bay to bay to suit the background level of illumination required. A series of mock-ups showed that an ambient light at 4000K worked extremely well with the daylight available in the galleries, and avoided the ‘yellowing’ appearance that a warmer LED source might have introduced.
By contrast, and to create the modelling on objects, a miniature track system was introduced at the front of the case using 3000K warm white sources, as concealed as possible while working within the constraints of the original case framing. This system can carry a number of re-configurable LED spotlights that can have their colour and beam adjusted to suit the objects, and is fully individually dimmable. This approach suits a series of displays where many of the objects can only be illuminated to 50 lux to protect their delicate materials. The spotlights also allow the museum to re-configure displays to suit their Rapid Response collection: displaying and rotating objects as they are acquired.
The final step was to commission the cases: DHA’s experience with dealing with a full range of objects means that we can balance the required light levels into a cohesive visual composition, making each object have its own weight and significance while maintaining the correct light levels. The results speak for themselves.
Gallery 74 cases after refurbishment
The cases are again fit for purpose in a museum of art and design: objects and graphics can be clearly seen in a good quality of light with the correct colour rendering; the system is fully adjustable to suit the changing displays, and the control is logical and simple to operate. This is a great example of how good lighting can aid in museum sustainability: old cases need not be discarded, they can be refreshed and made suitable for the demands of C21st display, while reducing energy costs and maintenance demands at the same time.
When creating bespoke lighting systems for display cases, then a physical mock-up – as intensive and time-consuming as it will be – is an absolutely necessity for the best results.
Jonathan Howard recently travelled – in a Covid-safe manner, naturally – with designers from Casson Mann to the factory of Click Netherfield in Livingston, just outside Edinburgh. The aim was to test and refine the lighting in some key display cases for a new museum, opening in London in 2022.
Not only will the cases be built mainly from glass, but the contents of each case will be a variety of samples and specimens, all displayed in liquid-filled glass jars: with so many reflective and refractive surfaces in use, it becomes easy to see why only a mock-up could cope with the many variables and methods in play: lighting all of the objects to give them a suitable weight and clarity when they need to be limited in light levels, while making sure that labels and graphics are very clearly illuminated is quite a feat of engineering and one that has been occupying us in the recent months.
Separation of light levels between graphics an objects has been developed using a combination of very narrow beam angle LED fixtures by Vexica, with a series of masking elements developed by Jonathan & Click’s designers, which has meant that we can achieve light levels of over 200 lux on a graphic that is merely millimetres from a shelf that is lit to a maximum of 50 lux; this separation will allow visitors to read small text easily, while not suffering with visual accommodation problems when they look past to the objects themselves, displayed at conservation light levels that will protect their organic content. As the source of the light is masked from view, we cut extraneous reflections and glare that could easily make the multiple glass and metal surfaces become their own light sources and a source of visual confusion.
The museum will not open until well into 2022, but this work needs to be carried out now to ensure that cases can be built in good time for transport and assembly on site, ready for the collection to be transferred to the finished gallery.
