IES Light For Life® Virtual Symposium 2024: Museum Lighting - Preserving Our Stories
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- Non-member - $39
- Member - $29
- The vital effect of lighting on appearance and preservation of museum objects
- The multitude of advancements in lighting equipment, controls, and light source characteristics
- New recommendations for lighting and exhibition procedures
Introduction
Symposium overview: why are museums important, and what does the IES Museum Lighting Committee do?
IPOP and the Museum Experience
How can we improve the experiences of visitors in museums? This presentation will introduce the IPOP (Idea, People, Object, Physical) Experience Preference Theory and discuss its application in exhibition design and visitor engagement. Special attention will be given to its usefulness in facilitating outstanding visitor experiences and to the important role played by lighting in affecting the physical component of the model.
Preservation of Light Sensitive Materials
The Preservation of Light-Sensitive Materials section of ANSI/IES RP-30-20 Recommended Practice: Lighting Museums lists the four primary factors that determine the rate of photochemical damage.
1. Susceptibility of a material to optical radiation
2. Intensity of radiation at the surface of the material
3. Duration of exposure
4. Spectral power distribution of the light source
This presentation will summarize the evolution of our understanding regarding light-induced damage and our ability to control these four factors. The challenge is to find a balance between the implementation of rigid lighting standards and the importance of providing quality illumination that will enhance the museum visitor’s viewing experience.
Lighting for Museum Collections: Policy, Practice, and Procedures
The collections management framework for museums sets out policies for accessing and caring for collections. Included in this are the expected and desired lifespans for light-sensitive collections, and procedures for their display and loans. How does this work in practice, particularly for challenging spaces and historic buildings where daylight is the primary form of lighting? For the long-term display of collections, light budgets and cumulative lux measurements are useful for monitoring performance and prioritizing improvements to light control.
Handcrafting Light in the 21st Century at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
At the Smithsonian, we’ve developed a cutting-edge lighting system featuring thousands of Bluetooth-connected spotlights. About half of these luminaires can adjust their color, while the other half can be shaped and softened with unprecedented precision thanks to LED technology. This innovative system empowers Scott to orchestrate light in ways previously unimaginable, enabling dynamic performances that bring epic scale paintings to life and reveal the beauty and stories embedded in the artworks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We aim to showcase this system through a lighting demonstration, highlighting its ability to enhance the viewing experience for visitors. Topics covered will include the utilization of track lighting and various accessories to illuminate fine art, minimize glare, achieve uniform wall washes, preserve light-sensitive artworks, and optimize the experience for visitors, including those with low vision and color deficiencies.
Enlightening Inquiries: What Your Lighting Designer Wants to Know
Knowledge is power. From working to help visualize your story; to understanding content, schedule, budget, and scale; to aesthetic considerations; to technical challenges; to owner concerns and more, there are myriad of ubiquitous components that any professional lighting designer will want to discuss and absorb. The more you can share with a lighting designer, the more you can depend on successful outcomes and budget estimating. This talk aims to set you up for success.
Recreating and Preserving Color with Light
A review of case studies exploring different lighting technologies, from track lighting to projection mapping. The two speakers will discuss lighting techniques, both simple and complex, that allow museum conservators to restore colored art and artifacts that faded (or were distorted) with time and exposure. Rugved Kore will provide a glimpse into the future where projectors can be used to preserve artworks using a novel innovative approach.
Getting the Light Right: Daylighting and Preservation
A half-hour debate between an architect and a conservator about the issues – pros and cons – of having daylight in museum galleries.
· What is the proper role of daylight in museums?
· What are concerns about the use of daylight in museums?
· What are examples where daylight is underused, overused or where the balance is just right?
What a Lighting Design Client Really Wants
What do lighting design clients really want? What “expensive problems” do you solve for them? How can lighting designers, manufacturers, and suppliers better align with their customers? What do lighting design clients want in a collaborator? A real-life client lays it all out there, in an upbeat and candid session.
Moderated Panel Discussion
Watch any or all of the videos from the symposium. You must watch each video in its entirety to unlock the corresponding CEU certificate. Watch all videos to receive a total of 6 CEUs.
Scott Rosenfeld
Lighting Designer
Scott Rosenfeld is lighting designer at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Scott’s research focuses on detailing the attributes of light, luminaires, and what makes a successful lighting design. He is especially interested in discovering the relative merits of metrology vs. a designer’s eye. To achieve this goal Scott collaborates with color scientists to learn how light may improve vision, manufactures on how to build a better luminaire and museum conservation scientists to reduce the damage to artifacts. Scott is a Fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society where he leads an international team of experts to develop ANSI Standards and best practices.
Kaitlin Page (Moderator)
Kaitlin is a licensed Engineer and a Lighting Certified professional with CD Companies. She brings over 17 years of experience in electrical engineering, specializing in lighting design, in a variety of project types including healthcare, higher education, research and life sciences, government, commercial, and more. With over 30 national and local speaking engagements, she consistently kindles passion for evidence-based, creative designs.
Steven Rosen
Founder
Available Light
Steven is the founder of Available Light, an experiential lighting design firm specializing in Museum Exhibition. Steven’s work embraces projects large and small, from Deep Time and Ocean Hall at the National Museum of Natural History to Harvard’s Glass Flowers exhibit, and from the National Museum of the US Army to galleries at the Peabody Essex Museum.
His commitment to the creative application of light is closely tied to responsible design solutions including assuring artifact conservation criteria and sustainable environmental design techniques. Steven is a Fellow of the International Association of Lighting Designers and is passionate about developing next generation of lighting designers.
Rugved Kore
Rugved Kore is a Phd Candidate at Penn State University. His doctoral research focuses on a light projection system that reduces damage to artwork without causing perceptible shifts. Rugved has an extensive range of human factors research experience spanning across multiple disciplines. In lighting discipline, his other research work includes non-visual effects of light and AI in lighting.
Kirsten Opstad
Kirsten Opstad is an interdisciplinary designer who works often with lighting, art & technology. After developing the exhibition lighting design role at the LA County Museum of Art, she pivoted into a decidedly more technical position, now working as a full-time software developer for ArtsVision. The intersection of art and technology is a continued personal and professional passion which fuels her engagement with the museum lighting community at large.
Andrew J. Pekarik
Andrew J. Pekarik, Ph.D., retired in 2016 after spending 24 years at the Smithsonian Institution, designing and conducting studies of visitors to the Smithsonian’s exhibitions and museums. Interviewing people individually and intensively, investigating their preferences, attitudes, needs, and interior rationales, he observed that visitors’ approaches often did not accord with staff expectations. Together with Professor James B. Schreiber and Smithsonian staffer Barbara Mogel, Dr. Pekarik codified these findings into a Theory of Experience Preference, which holds that people are drawn in varying degrees to four types of experience: Ideas, People, Objects, or Physicality. Awareness of these patterns can help create better outcomes across all audiences.
James B. Schreiber
He received his doctorate in Learning and Cognition from Indiana University Bloomington. He has published over 100 articles in journals, such as Journal of Educational Psychology, American Journal of Health Education, and Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, along with chapters and reviews. He is the author of research methods, statistics, and motivation books. He has been an Advisory Board member for the Lemelson Center for the Study of Innovation and Invention, panel reviewer and panel chair with the IES and NSF. He was recently on the design team for Mars: The Next Giant Leap at the Carnegie Science Center. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Research, and The Journal of Experimental Education.
Matthew D. Franks
Matt Franks is an Associate Principal and Americas West Lighting Design Leader based in Arup’s San Francisco office.
Matt’s strength is combining his experience with both daylight and electric lighting and state of the art simulation techniques to produce lighting designs that enhance spatial experience. Since joining Arup, Matt has a demonstrated record of producing award winning architectural lighting and daylighting design for a wide range of project types. Matt has broad experience in lighting and daylighting design for museums, with recent projects including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Glenstone, and the Corning Museum of Glass.
Paul Himmelstein
Paul Himmelstein is an art conservator in New York City. He treats paintings, and also consults with museums and private collections of issues relating to lighting and environmental control.
Siobhan Watts
Lead Conservator
National Museums Liverpool
Siobhan Watts is Lead Conservator at National Museums Liverpool. Siobhan graduated from Durham University with an MA in the Conservation in Historic Objects and went on to complete a PhD in Archaeological Science at Bradford University. She has worked previously as a conservation scientist at National Museums Liverpool and as a conservator at the National Trust, advising on preventive and remedial conservation for historic properties in North Wales.
As Lead Conservator, Siobhan manages a team of material specialist and preventive conservators, and develops the preventive conservation strategy for National Museums Liverpool. This involves advising on improvements to light control across a range of museum venues with collections that include fine and decorative art, social history, natural science and global cultures.
Jonathan Alger
Managing Partner
C&G Partners
Jonathan Alger is the Managing Partner of C&G Partners, a design firm known for exhibition and experience design. His clients over 25 years include Bronx Zoo, Cornell, Federal Reserve, Gates Foundation, US Holocaust Museum, Library of Congress, NASA, National Archives, Princeton, Smithsonian, and the US Department of State. Jonathan has been honored by AIGA, AAM, AASLH, ADC, Communication Arts, IDSA, NEA, SEGD, TDC and Webbys. He is a National Design Award Finalist,l and the author/host of “Making the Museum”, the newsletter and podcast for museum leaders, exhibition teams, and visitor experience pros. Jonathan graduated from Yale in architecture.
Steven Weintraub
Steven Weintraub specializes in the preservation of museum collections. He is a graduate of the Conservation program at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Prior to establishing Art Preservation Services, a company focusing on preservation of museum collections, he worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Conservation Institute.
A primary focus of his research has been on perception of color, with the goal of providing a scientific basis for establishing a balance between minimizing light-induced damage and maximizing the qualitative experience of viewing art in a museum setting.
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