Easy methods to Mount a Photography Exhibit

Suppose you’re April Watson, senior curator of pictures on the Nelson-Atkins. You can curate a present referred to as “American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today,” however somebody has to get the pictures out of storage and onto the partitions of the Bloch Building. For that, you want a phenomenally proficient human like Saori Lewis, a conservator of pictures on the Nelson-Atkins. 

Kansas City journal met Lewis within the museum’s behind-the-scenes restoration lab, the place she defined the painstaking means of getting uncommon pictures able to view.

She begins months earlier than an exhibition opens with a listing of each picture within the present, diving into the Nelson’s large database to review every merchandise’s exhibition historical past. The pictures are terribly fragile, so her first step is gentle measurements and estimates.

“I do some calculations to quantify how much light a photograph has had,” Lewis says. “Then I calculate how much we anticipate for the next display.” 

That is, she measures the depth of the sunshine, multiplying that by the variety of hours the lights might be on within the galleries over the exhibit’s run.

Next, she takes in depth notes on every picture, together with the photographic course of itself, how the picture was mounted and initially introduced by the artist and situation points, like soiling or tiny rips.

After that, Lewis decides the best way to put together every image for public show. Her precedence is something which may intervene with the viewing of the pictures or influence the picture’s long-term stability. 

“Dirt can interfere with the overall appearance,” she says. “It’s usually so thin that you can’t see, but dirt is bad for image preservation because it attracts moisture. And it can transfer onto other things and hold acidity, which degrades paper.”

From there, she writes formal proposals for any picture that wants remedy. Those remedies vary from easy to loopy advanced. 

After taking a picture of the {photograph} she plans to deal with, documenting its situation, she may merely clear the floor utilizing comfortable brushes. After that, she may humidify the picture and bathe it in a tray of water. There is perhaps a “bleaching step” —gently utilizing gentle or chemical brokers to scale back discoloration. 

She additionally does plenty of flattening. 

“Undulation is a common problem,” she says. “Like a wobbly picture. So when it’s on the wall, it doesn’t look good. It casts these, like, wavy shadows. So pressing and flattening is a step that I do a lot.”

As you may suspect, this work takes tons of schooling. Originally from Japan, Lewis received her bachelor’s diploma in studio artwork from the Kansas City Art Institute, then a grasp’s in artwork conservation from Buffalo State. 

A gentle hand issues too, significantly within the “consolidation of emulsion.”

“For a standard black and white picture — a silver gelatin print — the image is held on a really thin layer of gelatin, like hardened gelatin,” Lewis says. “It’s kind of hard and it snaps easily.”

She repairs these flaws by introducing a tiny quantity of heat, extraordinarily pure gelatin to the floor with a fine-point brush—whereas trying by way of the large microscope she calls her “best friend.”

After extra documentation, she lastly passes the picture on to a matting and framing specialist. Then it goes to the installer who hangs the photographs.

Once the pictures are on the wall, Lewis has one final process: extra measurements of every work’s gentle publicity and coloration situation. That offers her “a reference point to make recommendations for the future.”

The future. That’s what Lewis’s work is all about. The record-keeping and caretaking is completed to make sure that these pictures could be seen and loved by generations to return.

“For hundreds of years, I hope,” she says.

GO: “American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today.” February 7–August 2, 2026. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Related