{"id":592,"date":"2016-01-28T07:34:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T12:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=592"},"modified":"2016-01-28T07:34:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T12:34:58","slug":"who-needs-a-lighting-designer-museums-and-galleries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=592","title":{"rendered":"Who Needs A Lighting Designer? Museums and Galleries!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I gave a three-hour seminar on lighting museums and galleries to the graduate students in an art curating program at a university here in New York. Condensing everything I\u2019d like to say into less than three hours was tough. The two big questions were what to include and what to leave out. I started with a quick overview of how to think about light and lighting before moving on to basic vocabulary and some common lighting techniques. Then, since LEDs are clearly the future, even when lighting art, I moved on to an overview of both color temperature and color rendering. I talked about reference materials such as the IES Lighting Handbook<\/em>, intensity and brightness ratios, and other considerations before we moved into their gallery space to use\u00a0their track light system for some demonstrations.<\/p>\n

After the whole affair a faculty member, who sat in on most of the seminar, said\u00a0he had hoped I would have spent much more time talking about how to use track lights and less time on unimportant issues like design, color temperature, and color rendering\u00a0(!). I was respectful, but stunned. Focusing track lights is so complex that it requires extensive demonstrations? Understanding that with LEDs the color qualities of the light vary widely, and can only be properly selected when they are understood is unimportant information? Uhh\u2026NO. Or, as my 20 month old niece says, \u201cno no no no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, five or ten years ago the default light source in museums was an incandescent or halogen lamp. The color temperature difference was minor and the color rendering of both was excellent. That\u2019s not true today. Look at the cut sheet for any museum grade track light and you\u2019ll see that you have a choice of several\u00a0color temperatures and CRI values. If ANYONE needs to understand the qualities of light that must be selected when using LED fixtures, if anyone needs to understand the affect that color temperature and CRI have on how\u00a0colors are perceived, it\u2019s certainly people involved in displaying and lighting art. To me, that means the curators of exhibits and the lighting designers they hire.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve discussed earlier<\/a>, changing the color temperature of the light changes the color appearance of objects, as shown below.<\/p>\n

\"Illuminated<\/a>
Illuminated with\u00a03000 K light<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Illuminated<\/a>
Illuminated with\u00a04000 K light<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The phenomenon of color consistency means that the shift in color appearance isn\u2019t as great as one might expect or as these photos suggest, but the shifts\u00a0are real. If you\u2019ve ever bought a black garment only to discover later that it was actually dark blue you\u2019ve experienced this shift. A similar thing happens when we compare a high CRI light source and a low CRI light source. If your work involves color perception this is basic and critical information.<\/p>\n

Curators can be forgiven for not knowing much<\/u> about this, but if they know nothing<\/u> how can they collaborate with their lighting designer to show the art as they intend? Administrators and curators of museums and galleries \u2013 educate yourselves, then hire a lighting designer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I gave a three-hour seminar on lighting museums and galleries to the graduate students in an art curating program at a university here in New York. Condensing everything I\u2019d like to say into less than three hours was tough. The two big questions were what to include and what to leave … Continue reading Who Needs A Lighting Designer? Museums and Galleries!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,18,21,11,17,19],"tags":[61,27,29,34,30],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-color","category-design","category-education","category-leds","category-light","category-lighting-profession","tag-color-perception","tag-color-rendering","tag-color-temperature","tag-design-2","tag-led"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gZSw-9y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1264,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=1264","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":0},"title":"Standard 189.1 Now Includes TM-30 Requirements","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"August 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday an addendum to ANSI\/ASHRAE\/ICC\/USGBC\/IES Standard 189.1-2017 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings was published. The addendum makes changes to Section 8.3.5, which covers lighting. One of the biggest changes is to add TM-30 color rendition criteria to the section on Indoor Lighting Quality. Here's the relevant text:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Codes"","block_context":{"text":"Codes","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":98,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=98","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":1},"title":"Basking in a New Glow","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"February 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York times has an \"I Heart LEDs\" article in today's paper that leaves out some important information about evaluating them. \u00a0Here are some additional thoughts. The government hasn't done a very good job of publicizing or explaining that the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007\u00a0(EISA) set minimum\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Color"","block_context":{"text":"Color","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"Lighting Facts Label","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designinglight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LED_LF_Label_Example.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designinglight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LED_LF_Label_Example.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designinglight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LED_LF_Label_Example.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designinglight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/LED_LF_Label_Example.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":223,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=223","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":2},"title":"Circadian Lighting","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"October 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article in The Wall Street Journal discussed the possibilities and benefits of lighting systems that shift color to mimic the changes in daylight. It\u2019s a complicated subject so it\u2019s not surprising that some of what\u2019s reported is inaccurate, so let me clarify a few things. First, our current\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"ipRGC (black), rod (blue), and cone (red) sensitivity curves","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/designinglight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/VLambda-phot-scot-circ-300x254.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":794,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=794","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":3},"title":"Samsung Introduces Chip-on-Board LED Packages Optimized for Commercial Lighting \u2013 Samsung Global Newsroom","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"November 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Source: Samsung Introduces Chip-on-Board LED Packages Optimized for Commercial Lighting \u2013 Samsung Global Newsroom An interesting bit of news from Samsung this week. \u00a0They've developed an LED package especially designed to achieve an Rg value over 110, \"a level that ensures lighting with outstanding color and whiteness.\" It's important to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Color"","block_context":{"text":"Color","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":692,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=692","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":4},"title":"LRC Responds to AMA on LEDs","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"March 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"You may remember that in June of last year the American Medical Association (AMA) released a report called \u201cHuman and Environmental Effects of Light Emitting Diode (LED) Community Lighting.\u201d The report made some noise in the general press because it supported the idea that blue light from blue-pump white LEDs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Color"","block_context":{"text":"Color","link":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1555,"url":"https:\/\/designinglight.com\/?p=1555","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":5},"title":"TM-30 Is Not Too Hard To Learn!","author":"Jason Livingston","date":"March 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Recently, a well-known lighting designer gave a presentation at a well-known lighting conference. 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