How do you design an exhibition for a difficult gallery space?
Treat the space as a design material. Decide what should disappear, what to use, and what the visitor should feel on arrival. Paint, light and a few strong moves can go a long way.
Decide what the room should do
For Have A Seat, a Denver Art Museum exhibition of contemporary Mexican design, the works sit directly on the floor and visitors are free to sit on them. We painted the exhibition walls to match the gallery floor, which removes the walls as a focal point and shifts attention to the low objects. Strong graphic shapes, text and lighting gather the items into groups.
Make the entrance count
For Simphiwe Ndzube: Oracles of the Pink Universe, we used the unique architecture of the gallery to turn the ordinary act of entering a museum gallery into a portal into the show's Pink Universe. A black-box gallery then isolated the works and removed architectural distraction.
Design for how the space will be used
On Have A Seat, very bright spots present the seats like jewels and also mark where each one belongs, which helps gallery hosts reset the objects after visitors move them. Looping documentaries add sound that gives context about the people and places where the objects are made.