I am a UK-based self-employed Art Technician, who travels around my local region to different galleries and museums to install art exhibitions.
Sometimes I handle famous and expensive artworks or priceless artifacts, but most of the time it’s probably artworks you’ve not heard of. This includes 2D work like paintings, 3D work like sculptures, video projections, screens, sound systems, computers, and room-filling installations. Sometimes we work directly with living artists to help produce their work.
Happy to talk about technical stuff i.e. how artworks are transported, packed, fixed to the wall, what sort of fittings are used, how an exhibition is spaced out, hung, arranged etc; or to talk about working in galleries, or any questions from artists about how to prepare works for exhibition etc
I’m also a practicing artist, and historically both a filmmaker and gallery curator - so happy to answer things relating to that sort of thing too.
Because it’s a pretty niche job I may have to keep some details vague for privacy etc.
I’m doing a public talk fairly soon on “what I do”, and I need to know what sort of things people are potentially interested in, so I can focus more on those in the talk - so any relevant questions would be really helpful to me, thank you.
In galleries and museums I frequently find it difficult to properly see a painting with a glass cover because the glass reflects the room’s lighting. So wherever I stand, one part of the painting is covered by light. Is this normal?
I’ve seen one guy online years ago claim that the important old artworks shown in museums and galleries are actually replicas, that it’s too dangerous to display the originals. I thought that sounds like bullshit. Is it?
Glass:
Yeah, this is a common problem with any glazed works - and perspex is even more reflective than standard glass.
You can sometimes minimise the problem with careful lighting (ideally from high enough up to not be seen in a reflection), but generally it’s an issue everywhere.
There is a more expensive mostly non-reflective “art glass”, which is UV resistant and under most gallery lighting should let you pretty much look straight on at a work with no reflection. It tends to cost about 4x as much as normal glass. It does have a barely detectable green or purple tint, but compared to reflecting, it looks much better. It’s expensive, but it’s pretty amazing the effect it has - you can see a reflection from a sharp angle, but straight on it looks unglazed. If I can dig out some appropriate photos later, I’ll edit them in.
Replicas:
I’ve never knowingly seen that happen, but I’ve very rarely worked outside the UK, so it could be common practice elsewhere. Given the amount of security prep around some of the more famous historical works I’ve installed, I’m relatively confident they’re the real ones.
One exception is for when a popular work is loaned elsewhere - they often put a print/replica or something on its place - though this would be clearly labelled.
Thank you! I opened the thread kind of wondering how interesting it could be - after all, you’re just placing the artwork where it has to be, no big philosophy, right, what is there to even ask? But reading through the existing replies and thinking about my own experiences in museums inspired me to come up with questions, and your answers have been really interesting.
As for the reflection, I wondered if the problem could be that I’m physically too short so I view the artwork from a lower angle…