Conservation Museum Lighting Design for William Morris Gallery Textile Exhibition

The Social Fabric: African Textiles Today Exhibition is a touring exhibition on loan from the British Museum.

This exciting new exhibition explores how the printed and factory-woven textiles of eastern and southern Africa reflect the shifting times, fashions and tastes of the region. It demonstrates how the cloth is used to celebrate influential people and great occasions such as Nelson Mandela and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Our museum lighting designers were contacted by Rowan Bain the exhibition curator at the William Morris Gallery in London. The museum exhibition curator had contacted many other lighting designers but after speaking with our team, quickly decided they would appoint our lighting company for the conservation lighting of this important exhibition.  

The brief was to use existing lighting track, controls and fittings to achieve conservation lighting design of 50 lux light level. This light level was specified by the British Museum, except for two objects which could have considerably more.

As you will see from the museum exhibition photographs this was used to great advantage by making a dramatic vista on entering the space. By highlighting the dress & necklace, drama was achieved whilst still controlling the light spill to the surrounding objects.

We accomplished this by changing the intensity and angle of the lamps used in the light fittings. Plus fitting different light filters, egg crate louvres to make viewing angles much more pleasant on the eye.

The individual halogen light fittings were dimmed to no more than 40% (otherwise light becomes unacceptably yellow) keeping the light render even across the entire exhibition.

The William Morris Gallery & British Museum were both delighted with the final light focusing, positioning and conservation light levels on their joint exhibition.

Museum Lighting Design Services

Initial Design Consultation
UV & IR Level monitoring
Light levels (Lux) monitoring
Conservation Lighting
Troubleshooting Poor Lighting
Adjusting & Focusing of Light Fixtures
Exhibition lighting
Lighting Controls
Energy Saving Solutions
Detailed Lighting Specification
LED & Fibre Optic Lighting

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