Art Gallery Visit at the Seattle Art Museum

Site Visited: Seattle Art Museum

Looking for inspiration for my art gallery design, I visited the Seattle Art Museum to view how the museum presented different pieces of art. When walking through the museum, many different presentation styles where evident. I noticed that there where many moveable walls throughout the different floors, pedestals, class casings, stands, and various usages of lighting. 

Every floor had moveable walls that seemed as if they were permanent. They came in many different colors ranging from white to a rosy red. These different colors created a different effect. The red walls where used to complement a dark collection that was on display. This helped emphasis the dark illusion seen in the paintings.

They also had many lamps on their track lighting system with a variety of light filters. Some art pieces where lit with more than two lamps creating an interesting light composition that complimented the art pieces. The lights seemed to be mostly florescent bulbs. What was interesting was the fact that each type of art called for its own amount of light. 

They had many different types of displays when I visited the museum.

Some of the art was on pedestals,

while other works where on glass shelves, which complemented the glass collection on display.

Then I saw that some art works where on shelves,

and some where on little stands.

The museum also displayed art from walls and ceilings.

 When I was looking throughout the museum I only saw one area that had natural light. The windows had a sheet of perforated plastic over them that limited the amount of light that came into the space. However, the natural lighting was an interesting change to see in the space, particularly next to the abstract painting. 

Something that I noticed throughout the spaces and the different exhibits was a change in sitting furniture. They seemed to correspond with the theme of the art around them. They even had African themed benches to go with the African exhibit.

When I was walking through the museum I was guided by escalators from floor to floor. These big elements made it evident where I needed to go. The more permanent art exhibits where on the lower floor and the  temporary art exhibits where on the higher floors. Placing the more popular art exhibits on the top floors was an interesting way to show the hierarchy in the art pieces.

They had many exhibits there the day I visited:

African art

Chinese, South Asian and Southeast Asian Art

Decorative arts

European art

Japanese and Korean Art

Modern art

Native and Mesoamerican Art

and many others.

Each of these collections of art had their own amount of space. Some art collections had only about 400 sq ft and then their where others that had up to 5000 sq ft. The size of the exhibit seemed to depend on the size, type of art, and importance of the exhibit. For example, paintings need less space than some sculptures, and little trinkets need less space then paintings. 

Impaired Vision Experience

The other day I was given the chance to see what life would look like with different types of visual disabilities. My classmates and I used sheets of plastic to perform 2 visual experiments. First we looked though 2 layers of plastic then through 4.    

The image below on the upper left is how most of us would see the world. The image on the right is what things would look like looking through 4 layers of plastic. A visual disability like this would make it really hard for one to make out specific objects and surfaces, but what can be seen are colors and shapes. Knowing this can help for designing a space for a person who happens to see the world in a similar way. For example, if the individual can clearly depict colors and shapes rather than

After we saw the hallway with different type of visual impairments we placed on sunglasses that had a film of transparent paste. It made it hard to see where we where going and made it hard to walk because sometime we didn't know where we were walking. I almost fell a few times.We tried using a local ATM to see if we could use it well with the glasses on. On the ATM we saw that their where some color coded pads. The number pad was green, and the slot to slide your card in was red. These things made it easy to now where to place our hands when we where using it. The ATM also had button that where raised from the pad so one could fell for them. The buttons also had braille on them so if one was visually impaired if they knew braille then it would be easier for them to use it. 

We also walked through our library one our campus and walked down the stairs. The black strips that the steps had made it easy to know where the end of a step was and when a new one started. This helped use not fall down the stairs. 

This was an eye opening experiences. Now I can apply what I have learned to designing a better space. 

Uris Giron