Aluminum by Design
Project Vision
Aluminum by Design: Jewelry to Jets, Carnegie Museum of Art
Visitors move through five galleries that focus on aluminum as a crucial material that helped shape the twentieth century. To deliver a visitor experience different from the typical show of “art on the walls of a white room,” Bally Design moved the objects away from the walls and into environments of rich color, dramatic lighting, integrated graphics, and custom vitrines – producing a striking visual language for use throughout the exhibition. Telling the story of aluminum proved challenging in regard to the floor plan design; how to integrate meandering and freedom of exploration with a sense of chronology? The solution was to suspend an aluminum ribbon, beginning outside the gallery entrance and continuing seamlessly through the five galleries, as a subtle indicator of the suggested route.
Project Details
As a measured effort to break out of the white-box gallery, this exhibition adds design value with a minimum of effort and avoids the predictable overuse of aluminum. Instead, a simple ribbon is used as a graphic device to celebrate the material and to define a path.
Design Team
Frank Garrity (Principal in Charge), Stan Mamula, Gregoire Aby-Eva
Design Firm
Bally Design
Fabricators
Carnegie Museum of Art, Mega Media Concepts, Gottleib Design, Alpha Screen Graphics