This project was a prototype for a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-use art gallery exhibit planning and previsualization tool. The test venue was the Community Room at the San Diego City Library's Mission Valley branch. Due to the room's unique quarter-circle layout (seen below), it was an ideal test location for the project. In addition to hosting multiple meetings and functions, the space's walls are concurrently used for displaying art exhibits.
Below, a 360° panoramic view of the room shows an exhibit of Southern California artists called Untold Narratives.
The tool itself uses 3 panoramic images of the walls (assembled in Photoshop) and scaled to a matching grid. A PowerPoint presentation was then created, with a custom slide size to accommodate the largest image (the 67 foot curved wall). A total of four slides were created for the three walls, plus a "scaling slide" (aka: "Art Storage Area", shown below).
The scaling slide has a grid of the same scale as the other slides, but with additional divisions providing greater accuracy for scaling the artworks as they are imported. Once scaled on this page, the artwork can be copied to any of the wall panorama slides and moved around by the exhibit planner. This process is repeated for any artworks the planner wishes to consider placing on any wall.
Since this 67 foot arcing wall was the largest image, the slide layout was sized to 36" W x 12" H. Based on measurements taken on site, a common 1 foot square grid was created and used on each slide (the scaling slide has additional 6" increments). Because of an overhang, the usable display height was 10' 3". Since the room was used for multiple purposes, the library's chair height was measured and added to the grid as a red line. The white text box under the sample artwork (Mona Lisa) was added as part of the instructions and would not appear in normal usage of the tool.
The remaining images are slides for the two straight walls. As described on all slides, the grids can be hidden by selecting them and choosing "ARRANGE > SEND TO BACK" from the PowerPoint menu. To view them again, the user simply selects the background image of the wall, and repeats the procedure. Since all of the scaled artwork images are pasted in front of those two elements, they can be selected and moved around as desired. Once the planner has a wall with the artworks arranged to their satisfaction, they can export the slide as a JPG image file - without the grid visible for a clean preview, or with the grid visible as a guide for gallery assistants to hang the works.
If you are planning an exhibit at this location, the branch Librarian can be contacted for a digital copy of this planning/previz tool (PPT or PPTX) - all you need to use it is PowerPoint, and images of the artwork you plan to hang.
