DBN Lighting has designed, supplied and installed lighting for the new Da Vinci – the Genius exhibition at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry. DBN – which is based in Manchester itself – was enlisted for the project by Grande Exhibitions from Melbourne, Australia.
Occupying most of the top floor of a Grade 1 Listed timber frame building, the new exhibition incorporates four rooms – some sub-divided – and a small theatre space created with rigging and drapes. There is also a separate area devoted solely to Da Vinci’s most famous creation, Mona Lisa.
In response to the need to rig all the equipment without attaching anything to the building’s superstructure, DBN combined two distinct approaches to creating points – clamping carefully around the main beams and introducing ‘soft’ suspension systems – in order to fly scaffolding grids above each space.
The lighting rig consists exclusively of MR16 ‘Birdies’ – 260 in total and with varying wattages and beam angles. They are fitted with different frost and diffusion filters to add depth, mood and perspective to the exhibits, which include graphics panels, wooden models, prints and paintings.
Only two colour filters are used in the entire exhibition, namely Lee 203 1/4 CT blue devices to illuminate one picture.
The Da Vinci exhibition is open until June 2010 and is mirrored by three other exhibitions around the world.
