Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

With the opening of Click! rapidly approaching, I have been asked to describe my approach in designing and mounting this particular exhibition. It is important to note that although this exhibition is comprised entirely of photographs, it is not foremost a photography show, but rather an art installation addressing the conceptual nature of a crowd-curated exhibition. For this reason, the show will not be hung in a traditional manner, but rather laid out in a way that illustrates the diverse, anonymous, web-based crowd selection process.

The exhibition is being held in an intimate gallery space to allow the viewer to be immersed in the images of the “changing faces of Brooklyn.” Because of the gallery’s space constraints it was determined that of the 389 images submitted, the top-ranked 20% of images would be printed for display. Of this 20% (or roughly 78 photographs) a distinction was required to reflect the crowds selection process; for this reason some photographs were printed as large as 20” x 30” and some as small as 5” x 7”, depending upon the crowd’s rankings.

Rough layout of one of the gallery walls. Full layout: click_full.jpg.

When these images of varying size are displayed in a random arrangement it serves to illustrate the crowds’ selection process not as linear, but rather a diverse response with certain ideas or, in this case, photographs rising to the front of a collective conscious in much the way a tag cloud uses text to visually illustrate how within many voices certain responses carry varying degrees of impact.

Cloud tag from Flickr.com

The exhibition promises to be interesting on many levels, and I hope all that participated both in submitting photographs and those involved in the selection process can make it to see the results.

A major factor influencing Brushed with Light’s design was due to the delicate nature of watercolors themselves. Because the works are light sensitive it is required that they be exhibited in low light. This being said, a dim room is not always the most comfortable environment to view works of art.

As a solution, I designed the inner walls of the room to be recessed at the top so I could install lighting fixtures, which were then colored with gels and diffused to give the room an inviting glow, without subjecting the paintings to additional light. I repeated this technique in the gallery entrance so the visitor is reminded before even entering the space the important role light plays within these beautiful paintings. In addition the walls were painted with a deep berry palette which functions to make the paintings “pop”, due to the fact that light is reflected off the pictures while being absorbed by the wall around them, highlighting the pictures rather than the room.