Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2019

I was the exhibition designer for this show working with curator, Helen Burnham, and graphic designer, Nick Pioggia.

This exhibition celebrated 19th-century celebrity culture in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters, prints and paintings were shown among a variety of art forms including film, dance and music to create an immersive experience that captured the spirit of the time. The exhibition was organized into thematic sections highlighting Lautrec’s artistic innovations, such as dramatic lighting and color combinations, his expressive illustrations of life in cafes, cabarets and theaters, and of celebrities themselves. The design and experience was meant to immerse the visitor in the colorful, delightful and expressive spirit of this time and place.

Immersive experiences:

Woven throughout the show were videos paired with music from the period. A film of the Eiffel Tower by the Lumiere Brothers was in an early section about Paris by Day, a video of the Can Can dance was in the Cabaret section, surrounded by red velvet curtains and under string lights, and Loie Fuller dancing the Serpentine Dance was shown at the very end on a curtained stage set.

Color and lighting:

Rich jewel tones were chosen for the wall colors to complement the work and add drama and contrast to the experience. Moody and dramatic spotlighting was used in the cabaret and theatre sections and in contrast to brighter sections about daily life.

Casework:

I used two types of case designs in the show. In the first galleries, introducing the artist, I designed solid wooden cases to display the earlier work and especially to have a custom presentation for some double-sided drawings. As the show progressed and started talking more about the changing social landscape of the time, I introduced casework that recalled the ironwork of the art nouveau style, adding a table top and bonnet to found iron-looking bases.