Conservation Lighting for William Morris Gallery - British Museum Textile Exhibition

The Social Fabric: African Textiles Today Exhibition is a touring exhibition on loan from the British Museum.

This exciting new exhibition explores how the printed and factory-woven textiles of eastern and southern Africa reflect the shifting times, fashions and tastes of the region. It demonstrates how the cloth is used to celebrate influential people and great occasions. For example; Nelson Mandela and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Our museum lighting designers were contacted by Rowan Bain the exhibition curator at the William Morris Gallery in London. The museum exhibition curator had contacted many other lighting designers. However after speaking with our lighting team, she decided the museum would appoint our lighting company for the conservation lighting of this important exhibition.  

The brief was to use existing lighting track, controls and fittings to achieve conservation lighting design of 50 lux light level. This was the light level specified by the British Museum, except for two objects. These objects were allowed to have considerably more light up to a maximum of 200 lux.

As you will see from the museum exhibition images shown above, this was used to great effect. Our intention was to create a dramatic vista on entering the space. This was achieved by highlighting the dress & necklace. This introduced drama the exhibition needed, whilst still controlling the light spill to the surrounding objects.

To accomplish this we changed the intensity and angle of the lamps used in the light fittings. Combing this approach to the fitting of different light filters and egg crate louvers, made viewing angles much more pleasant to the eye.

As the museums existing lamps were still halogen (not LED). Individual light fittings were dimmed to no more than 40% (otherwise the light becomes unacceptably yellow). It is very important to keep the light rendering (colour) even across the entire exhibition.

The William Morris Gallery & British Museum were both delighted with the final light focusing, positioning and conservation light levels on their joint exhibition.

Conservation Lighting Design Services

Troubleshooting poor lighting
LED retro fitting of halogen light fittings
Light level monitoring
UV monitoring
Focusing of Lighting
Initial lighting design consultation
Exhibition lighting design
Detailed lighting specification
LED & Fibre Optic lighting
Lighting controls
Energy saving solutions