A detailed Louvre vibe
By CATHERINE FOX
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/08/2006
Passers-by peering through the window to Jim Waters' office at the High Museum of Art might conclude that
he spends his days playing with dolls.
Actually, the miniature rooms set out on his worktable are models of each floor of the museum's year-old
Anne Cox Chambers Wing. And Waters, the High's chief exhibition designer, has filled them with tiny
versions of the sculptures, drawings and paintings that will be on view when the first installment of a historic
collaboration — Louvre Atlanta — opens Saturday.
(ENLARGE)
At Versailles, damask on the walls sets off this portrait;
the lustrous fabric will be used on a panel in the
Atlanta exhibit.
(ENLARGE)
The exhibit designers did not want to re-create the
Louvre but did want to provide allusions to the
museum's grand spaces through photo blow-ups. This
image is of the Cabinet des Dessins, formerly a palace
reception hall and now the Louvre's drawings
department.
Andreas von Einsiedel
(ENLARGE)
Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave is making paper
costumes like the one above for the decorative arts
exhibit in March.
CHARLOTTE B. TEAGLE/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Chief exhibition designer Jim Waters (from left),
project manager Jody Cohen and head graphic
designer Angela Jaeger check a detail in one of the
models made for Louvre Atlanta.
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Though Lilliputian, the models represent a monumental
occurrence. Louvre Atlanta is the fruit of a groundbreaking
alliance the High has created with the venerated Paris
museum and will bring an array of artworks from the Paris
palace's vaunted collection to Atlanta over the next three
years.
The first year's exhibitions will focus on the royal collections
that form the core of the Louvre, from old master gems like
Raphael's portrait of Italian politico Castiglione to the trappings
of royal life exemplified by a porcelain soup tureen owned by
Marie Antoinette.
But mounting a successful exhibition takes more than objets
d'art — far more. So, for the past two years, Waters and the
rest of a trans-Atlantic team of 15-plus curators, educators and
designers from both museums have pored over every aspect
of the presentation, from circulation plans to paint colors to the
typeface on exhibit banners. No detail was too small or
mundane to consider. They know that the sum of their
decisions, be the effect spectacular or subliminal, will
determine the Louvre Atlanta experience.
THE ARCHITECTURE
Work on the exhibit design began with a flurry of change orders.
The Anne Cox Chambers Wing, a key component of the High's 2005 expansion, was still under construction
in spring 2004, when the two museums reached an agreement. It was immediately apparent that the
expansion's architect, the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, would need to make some changes to
accommodate the increased traffic Louvre Atlanta was expected to bring.
As a result, the architects turned planned broom closets on the second and third floors into bathrooms. They
redesigned the staircase — originally intended as an emergency exit — for everyday use to take the
pressure off the single elevator, and added a skylight. And they redesigned the lighting system to better
serve the fragile drawings that would be shown.
The Piano firm, in fact, became lead designer for the first year's exhibitions. The architects were responsible
for the general vision — the rough layout, the placement of temporary walls, the design of sculpture
pedestals.
"Piano is all about spatial relationships and transparency," says Waters.
You can see daylight between the legs of the pedestals, which are spaced almost 6 inches apart. In the
subliminal category is the 3/4-inch reveal (indentation) at the base of the low platforms in the galleries. The
Piano architects specified this detail, identical to the design of the permanent walls, to achieve coherence. In
addition, they requested that the platforms not touch the walls, to help establish the feeling of lightness that
is also a Piano design hallmark.
COMMUNICATION
The exhibit design is, as Waters says, the product of many hands and eyes. Each decision has required a
roundelay of approvals from the Louvre, the High and the Piano firm before making it up the ladder to the
final arbiters: museum directors Michael Shapiro of the High and Henri Loyrette of the Louvre.
High and Louvre staffers have visited one another on both sides of the ocean but carry out much of their
discussions via e-mail. Piano's firm made the models on Waters' worktable and created an identical set as a
reference for the Louvre team.
Waters is the fulcrum for all the planning information. To make the precise plans and elevations required, he
adapted the High's construction plans by learning to use a computer-assisted design program called
VectorWorks. (Fellow students in his training class included a NASA engineer and an organ builder.) It
allowed him to help plot the exhibit — from paintings to audio-tour stops to heating vents — piece by piece
on the computer. The program was a key instrument in determining the bones of the exhibit: the layout.
LAYOUT AND FLOW
The High staff — which includes Julia Forbes, head of museum interpretation; head graphic designer Angela
Jaeger; and Jody Cohen, Louvre Atlanta's project manager — took charge of the placement of objects in
consultation with the Louvre's curators.
"Curators have very strong opinions about what should be shown together," Waters says. "There are very
specific relationships that the curators wanted to make."
The drawings exhibition, for instance, has a specific story line — the history of the collection. To that end,
the Louvre's Varena Forcione wanted to group all the works acquired by one individual — and there was not
always room on one wall to do so. As a compromise, a grouping will spread over adjacent walls.
Visitor flow is a crucial part of the layout puzzle. No matter how wonderful its objects are, an exhibit can be a
nightmare if visitors are kept waiting or have to jostle with crowds to see it. Flow is equally critical for those
mindful of the gate.
"The museum wants to know the maximum number of people it can put through without reducing their
comfort level," Cohen explains.
In fact, thanks to a bit of arithmetic, the High thinks it's got the magic number. Based on the number of
objects on view, the average amount of time spent examining each one, the number of audio-tour stops and
other interpretative tools, it estimates the average visitor will spend 43 minutes looking at the exhibit.
The circulation plan aims to keep traffic at a steady pace without turning it into a forced march. The
placement of walls and the exhibit's story line nudge people in a relatively predictable path. The show's
pacing comes into play as well.
"We don't want to create design bottlenecks," Waters says. "The audio stops figure in big-time. You don't put
too many stops too close together, though you can pace it by adjusting the length of each entry."
Banners and lighting will encourage visitors to use the stairway in lieu of the elevator. The circulation plan
also directs visitors to exit through the bridge connecting the Cox wing to the Wieland Pavilion to prevent
crowding from backtracking and encourage visitors to see the rest of the museum.
COLOR
Observant visitors who have attended the High's major loan shows might recall that wall colors play a big
role in creating the atmosphere. Color cues also play a role in evoking the objects' previous homes.
Color is Waters' baby. He keeps boxes of samples from several manufacturers in his studio and an archive
of colors used in past exhibitions. He and Jaeger went to Paris last spring to research the palette. They
talked with Louvre curators, noted the colors of the paintings' frames and the patina of the paper in the
drawings show. They visited Versailles, the royal compound outside Paris that once housed much of the art
now in the Louvre, and took copious pictures.
Waters came up with a handful of reds for "Kings as Collectors," the yearlong exhibit of paintings and
sculptures on the skyway level. Since small color samples look different on the museum walls than they do
in his sunny studio, he hung large swatches in the gallery and studied them at different times of day.
"Reds are difficult," he says. "They vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer.
"The first red was a little black," he recalls. "It was too dull — like dried blood — and that's not an association
you want."
His research brought him to an aptly named hue — French Red — which he thought would bring out the
gold in the picture frames.
For the drawings he chose a blue called Moonless Morn — a cool color he thought would complement the
warmth of the paper. Blues are easier, but even so he replaced Moonless Morn with another blue called
Sunrise.
"The first one was too lavender," he explains. "I went with something with a little more black and gray."
(French Red, meanwhile, became Pottery Red when Waters changed paint manufacturers.)
His research also yielded another cue: damask, a lustrous fabric the royals used as wall covering and
upholstery. Inspired by an exhibition technique he once saw at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, he will use
the damask as covering for the special panel that will set off Raphael's portrait of Castiglione, one of the
most important works in the show.
Cohen took samples of the colors and fabric cut from the swatches to Paris to show the Louvre staff.
SET CHANGE
Come March, an exhibition of royal decorative arts will replace the drawings show. This has as much to do
with refreshing Louvre Atlanta and stimulating visitors to return as it does with the fragility of the drawings.
The staff will have three weeks and a small budget to accomplish the turnaround. To accentuate the
changeover, the walls will be repainted and the the circulation reversed. The designers also will enliven the
exhibition with striking life-size paper sculptures of period costumes by Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave.
GETTING REAL
Even after all the discussions and virtual planning, the designers know that things can change when the real
artwork arrives in the real space, and when the Louvre curators see it there for the first time.
When the pedestals were placed in the lobby according to the computer plan, the team discovered that their
grain conflicted with that of the floor.
"It's not something most people could pinpoint," Cohen says. But still, she says, "They might feel that
something was off."
Clearly, the Louvre Atlanta experience is in the details.