Table Of ContentLight for Art’s Sake
This book is dedicated to my wonderful family: Liz, Ken, Maureen,
Rob, Maria, Kurtis, Hannah, and Jessica.
Light for Art’s Sake
Lighting for Artworks and Museum Displays
Christopher Cuttle
AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS
SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier
Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK
30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA
First edition 2007
Copyright © 2007, Christopher Cuttle. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
The right of Christopher Cuttle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher
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‘Art for art’s sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves
a purpose which is not its own.’
Benjamin Constant, 1767–1834,
diary, 11 February 1804
‘The painting must reveal itself in different aspects if the moods of light
are included in its viewing, in its seeing.’
Louis Isadore Kahn, 1901–1974,
Light is the Theme.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1 A philosophy for the presentation of art 3
2 Revealing visual attributes 13
Light and illumination 13
Human response to light 17
Light levels in museums 28
Revealing with light 30
3 Light-induced damage to objects 39
Photochemical reactions 39
Radiant heating effect 40
Material response to exposure 41
Limiting exposure 45
4 Daylighting typologies 51
The aesthetics of daylight 51
Side-lit rooms 54
Monitor skylights 63
Central skylight picture galleries 67
Overall daylight-diffusing ceilings 79
Restricted daylight-diffusing ceilings 88
Polar-oriented skylights 92
Wall-lighting picture galleries 99
The presence of daylight 112
5 Daylighting controls 129
Light transmission 129
Light distribution 132
Ultraviolet transmission 137
Solar heat gain 138
Thermal transmission 140
viii Contents
6 Electric lighting typologies 143
The aesthetics of electric lighting 143
Room surface lighting 144
Lighting three-dimensional objects 152
Lighting two-dimensional objects 164
Case lighting 172
Supplementing daylight 183
Self-luminous art objects 186
7 Electric lighting controls 191
Light output control 191
Luminaire optical control 194
Luminaire directional control 209
Lighting control systems 209
8 Lighting strategies 213
Ambient illumination 213
A sequence of visual experiences 219
Minimal-exposure displays 236
The great space 245
Visual connections 254
9 Procedures for practice 263
A museum lighting pro forma 263
Setting up lighting for a new exhibition 275
Maintaining lighting during the life of an exhibition 279
References 281
Bibliography 283
Index 285
Preface
People visit museums to experience objects rather than images,
and among museums, the art museum provides for a special
type of visual experience. Visitors want not only to see the
object, but to gain an understanding of its nature and the artist’s
intention in creating it. The underlying concept of this book is
that lighting does not merely make things visible, but that it
influences the appearance of everything we see. The nature of
the lighting is inseparable from the visual experience of art.
I have spent an entire working life in lighting, held by fascination
for the manifold ways in which light’s interactions with matter
inform and guide our lives. I have had opportunities to visit art
museums in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia, and
these experiences have provided a rich foundation for my teaching
as well as the basis for this text. This book contains more than 200
of my own photographs gathered in these travels, and I should add
a few words of explanation. Readers who are accustomed to see-
ing the work of professional architectural photographers may be
surprised by the casual, almost snapshot, appearance of some of
these photographs. The point is that many of them have been
taken when I was simply a ticket-holding visitor to the museum,
and what I am showing is what a visitor sees. These photographs
do not aim to show the art or the architecture, but rather selected
aspects of the many different ways in which lighting influences the
visual experience of art. Some truly interesting examples that I
have seen are omitted because the institution concerned chooses
not to allow visitors to take photographs. Occasionally I have
requested photographs from such institutions, but they are seldom
satisfactory. The precise alignment of the architectural geometry
that they portray, and the total lack of human beings or even signs
of their contact, creates, to my mind, an artificial appearance.
However, the really damning factor is that almost invariably these
photographers seem to be unable to resist the temptation of
adding photoflood lighting, and of course, that completely defeats
my purpose. So I ask readers to be tolerant of my hand-held
photographs, and to appreciate that what I am showing is what
visitors see.
