"The Art of Lighting Art": Authenticity through Artifice at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This historical case study of lighting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) demonstrates how museum display priorities based on social science, advertising, and industrial research led to the present need to reconsider the lighting of artwork. In 1928, General Electric (GE) published their PMA lighting installation, replicating daylight through false skylights and windows. Unlike nature’s daylight, GE’s was controllable. Bright, diffuse, unchanging light disregarded the artwork’s original context but suited the PMA’s goals. The museum created a new context, defining American artistic patrimony while aesthetically educating workers. Hidden lighting exhibited the artwork in unobtrusive, yet brighter environment than visitors would otherwise experience in their daily lives, thus suggesting the art was valuable, important, and worthy of appreciation, especially for visitors lacking education or “inner preconditions” (Kemp) to make aesthetic judgments. In the Period Rooms, painstakingly curated by Fiske Kimball, daylight emanating through windows enhanced the illusion of the interior’s authenticity. GE used similar lighting in demonstration homes and showrooms. Borrowing additional commercial practices, the PMA pioneered museum market research, determining the greatest threat to public engagement to be “museum fatigue,” a concept inspired by industrial scientific management. The museum prioritized the quantity of artwork visitors viewed over the quality of their perception. Removing friction, like distracting lighting, prevented loss of attention. Experiencing the full assemblage of European, Colonial, and American artwork and interiors conjured a mythology of a teleological American identity through historic art objects, replete with modern technological control.