I have been obsessed with color analysis TikToks lately.

I haven’t gotten my professional reading yet, but from my many hours watching other people have different-colored fabrics draped over them as well as gazing at my hand through the paint chip aisle at my hardware store, I’m somewhat of an expert.

I am almost certainly a true autumn.

Turns out, color theory goes beyond whether gold or silver suits your skin tone better. Color theory is also used all the time in museums to create an environment for a work of art. The paint color behind a piece of art can transform how you see it.

A great paint color can make a piece of art sing, but a bad one can devastate it.

Here’s what happens when someone picks a gallery wall col

or, and why it matters more than you think.

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For years, my ultimate museum curiosity has been how big and heavy pieces of art get into museums. This curiosity has plagued me for as long as I can remember.

I cannot look at a sculpture without trying to figure out how it got inside.

Like you’re telling me that an entire Egyptian temple built in 15 BC is sitting inside the MET, and I’m just supposed to appreciate it for the history and art?! No, I will be examining the entrances and exits.

Since I started my role as an exhibition designer for the Guggenheim, my curiosity has begun to satiate. I am very excited to share my findings.

So, how did that sculpture get inside the museum?

Long story short: very carefully.

Will it fit?

Before a sculpture is officially selected for an exhibition - before contracts are signed, before a loan agreement is drafted, before anyone calls the shipper - someone has to confidently answer one simple question: will it fit?

And it’s more complicated than it sounds.

Every museum has physical constraints: the maximum door widths and heights, the size of the elevator car, and ceiling heights both in the loading docks and the galleries themselves. These aren’t abstract numbers. They are hard limits, and they have no wiggle room (even as hard as we sometimes try).

It’s less of a 12-foot-tall-sculpture-cannot-fit-inside-a-10-foot-gallery problem and more of an 8-foot-1 ⅜-inch-wide-piece-cannot-fit-inside-a-8-foot-wide elevator problem.

And yes, sometimes the tolerance is down to an ⅛ of an inch.

Let’s say the artist and curator are insistent that a 5 foot 11 7/8 inch wide piece be part of the show, and the max allowance through the door is 6 feet. Let’s boogie. We can (likely!) do that. It will be tough, people will sweat, but we can make it happen.

For works with strange proportions (i.e. long & narrow or shaped in weird way), museums will sometimes build a physical mock-up to test it. So, a cardboard, wood, or foam box is constructed to the exact outer dimensions of the object, then carried around the museum to make sure the artwork will fit.

Does the box fit down the hallway? Check.

Can it make that tight bend near the coat check? Check.

Can it fit in a diagonal in the elevator? Yikes. Nope. We have to find another way.

I have yet to witness this test, but the image of it sounds very comical. Just two guys carrying a big cardboard box with utmost seriousness around an empty museum. I laugh, but it is a very important test. The last thing we want is to ship a sculpture from Hong Kong to New York only to learn that it can’t make the bend around the corner.

The mock-up is our only chance to get it wrong.

Then there’s the question of entry.

Most museums have a loading dock and a freight elevator. But not every object fits in a freight elevator, and not every city gives you room to have a big loading dock. So some museums get creative.

When you enter the main hall of the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., one of the first things you notice are the tall floor-to-ceiling windows letting light spill into the space. Those windows are also serving a different purpose: they are designed to open on a large scale, specifically to accommodate the oversized aerospace objects that would never fit in a conventional entry point.

Hauser & Wirth on 22nd Street in Manhattan takes a different approach. The uppermost gallery has a glazed ceiling hatch that looks like a skylight. But, once again, it is doing double duty: it can open wide enough for a sculpture to be lowered in by crane from the street. You would never know the skylight wasn’t purely decorative.

And that, my friends, is good design.

The Engineers

Ok, that was a lot, but there is still one final step before a sculpture can enter the building: the engineering approval.

If I haven’t made it abundantly clear yet, these objects are heavy, and we need to make sure that the building can even support their weight plus the weight of the public that will be surrounding it for up to 40 hours/week.

A floor that can support several hundred visitors moving through a gallery may require additional reinforcement or plates beneath a sculpture to distribute a sculpture’s load over a greater area.

Currently at the Guggenheim, we have nearly 10,000lb of sculpture concentrated in one gallery. The engineers were working on the load distribution for months.

Getting it to its spot

The sculpture has arrived at the museum. It’s game time.

Nine times out of ten, a sculpture will be delivered to a museum in a crate inside a flat-bed truck.

Whether a crate is opened in the loading dock or near the work’s final position depends on the object and the comfort of the install team and conservator. The work is then moved into place using either a forklift (for heavy objects) or a flatbed pull cart, a low platform on wheels that is manually pushed/pulled (for medium-heavy objects).

The object is being moved, and is being accompanied by no less than four people: one registrar, the person operating the forklift or pull cart, at least two art-handlers, and maybe a conservator. The pathway to the sculpture’s final location has been planned, and sometimes it has been rehearsed (cue the cardboard box again!).

(Substack will not let me add a caption to this video. This is a clip from the Carol Bove installation - peep at the bottom of the video as She Wolf is being transported to its final spot. The sculpture is being accompanied by five individuals to make sure it arrives safely.)

Wood sheets go down on the floor to protect the surfaces. For particularly heavy pieces, we will also sometimes place steel plates first to distribute the weight, so you’re not concentrating thousands of pounds on a single point of flooring.

While it’s being moved, the rule of thumb is simple: keep the weight as low as possible for as long as possible. The higher the object is off the ground, the higher the likelihood that the object can tip. A reminder that, above all, all museum people’s primary job is to protect the art. We do not want this thing to tip.

Sometimes a part of my job is to create diagrams of these planned paths. Carefully showing which corners an object can clear, which columns may require a sculpture to be repositioned.

Again, in case you forgot, how heavy and big objects get into museums is my ultimate curiosity, so you can only imagine my excitement whenever I’m asked to make one of these diagrams.

Medium-Heavy Objects

We’ve arrived in the general area. Now we need to get the sculpture from the vehicle to its final spot. The methods change depending on how heavy the work is.

Some works, like busts, mid-scale bronzes, and stone pieces that weigh several hundred pounds, are manageable to be moved by humans. But, of course, they still need the proper equipment.

Before anything, the object is examined. A conservator or registrar will first assess the work along with the art handler: they’ll determine where it’s structurally sound, where it’s vulnerable, and where you cannot put a hand without risking damage. Again, above all, we have to protect the work. This step is non-negotiable.

Then, moving it is a two-person job (at least).

The process is this. One art handler supports the object, keeping it stable while the other tips it ever so slightly, just wide enough to fit a very thin piece of wood, called a shim, beneath one corner. Then, while the one art handler continues to support it, the other uses a pry bar to gain a little more clearance to slide a wide, flat sheet of slippery yet robust plastic beneath the sculpture.

With this plastic in place, the piece can be slid across a floor, repositioned by inches, or lifted slightly without scratching anything below it or stressing anything above.

It sounds like a minor thing. But, if you watch an art handler use one, it doesn’t look minor at all. There’s a real skill to reading how a piece wants to move, and that $40 sheet of plastic is what makes moving a priceless piece of art possible.

Heavy Objects: the Gantry

But what about sculptures that are too heavy for humans to lift?

That’s where the gantry comes in.

In a nutshell, a gantry is a portable crane. It’s a steel frame on wheels that can easily be assembled on site. It has a horizontal I-beam at the top with a hoist attached to it and then a hook and a series of chains attached to the hoist (this is so hard to describe in words tbh).

I have to be honest, I really do not understand the physics behind a gantry, but it acts the same as a pulley system (which I also do not fully understand).

I will do my best to describe it. A hoist at the top of the frame connects to the object you’re lifting via a hook and a series of chains. Pull the chain, and the object rises. But it’s not a 1:1 effort - it’s closer to 5:1. The weight is distributed across multiple pulls and points in the system, so the force required to lift something enormous is a fraction of what you’d expect.

The way I think about it is that it’s similar to riding a bike up a hill at a lower gear. You are still biking up a hill, but lowering the gear makes it easier because you are doing more revolutions within the same distance than if you were at a higher gear.

Does that make sense?

Before anything is strapped, again, the team does an assessment. A registrar, an art handler, sometimes a conservator. Where is the piece structurally sound? Where are the lifting points? What surfaces cannot be touched?

For major works, a lot of this information is known before the piece even arrives. Artists (or their studios, or their estates) often provide an artist’s manual: a document that travels with the work and specifies exactly how it should be handled, installed, stored, and transported. These manuals will arrive at the museum well ahead of install, so there are few surprises on site.

Sometimes, large or heavy objects will also come with removable hardware like a hook or attachment point designed specifically for installation. They are used to safely bear the load during installation and then detach once the piece is in place.

Once the piece is safely strapped in, the work is lifted just barely off of the cart or forklift (again, we don’t want to lift anything too far into the air!) and into it’s approximate final position. The work is then slowly lowered until it is hovering just barely off the ground, like maybe by one inch.

Then, everyone stops, and the artist and design team are called in. The work hovers. The curator steps back and looks. The artist, if present, looks. The exhibition designer looks. There’s a lot of nodding and thinking and walking around the piece. Nobody says much.

This is the moment when the final placement gets decided, confirmed, or quietly adjusted.

No render tells you how an object actually occupies a room, so this is our window to get it just right.

Once everyone agrees, the piece is fully lowered to the ground. Hardware is attached. And depending on the work’s weight, its center of gravity, and other art requirements, it gets secured down to the floor or anchored to the pedestal.

At the Guggenheim, because our floors are ramped, it is imperative that all sculptures be bolted to the ground, and sometimes a shim will be added to help the work stand straight and avoid any chance of tipping.

When it’s Not that Simple

Not every sculpture arrives upright, intact, and ready to place.

A sculpture might travel on its side. Think of a totem pole. It would be a bit silly for it to travel in its upright position, right?

Some sculptures will arrive lying flat on a truck, move flat through the building, then tipped right-side-up only once it is in final position. The sequence here matters: tip it too early and suddenly you have to navigate a 14-foot tall totem pole through a corridor that can’t accommodate it (this is also where the cardboard mock-up can help plan for).

Sometimes the sculpture will arrive in one piece, but depending on its size and weight, it’s not uncommon for the artwork to be shipped in pieces to be carefully put together on site.

Remember the MET’s Temple of Dendur that I mentioned earlier? The temple was deconstructed into separate numbered bricks, then arrived at the museum to be reassembled inside the Egyptian Wing like a giant, very delicate LEGO set.

Another example of this is the Statue of Athena Parthenos, which was on loan to the MET from Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. Here, the head arrived separately from the body and was pieced together on site.

The Richard Serra at SFMOMA

I want to walk through a specific example, because the abstract becomes interesting when it’s attached to an actual object.

What better example to use than the ultimate large-scale sculptor, Richard Serra?

Serra’s sculptures are among the most installation-intensive works in contemporary art. The pieces are massive, some weighing upward of 500,000 pounds. His pieces are so large that they create their own atmosphere.

You don’t look at a Serra. You move through it.

The Cor-ten steel that he uses works in our favor during transport. The material is built to weather - it’s actually part of its appeal. So the pieces can be strapped directly to flatbed trucks and left open to the elements. No climate-controlled crates, no special wrapping. They can travel exposed.

I get excited when I see someone with a mattress strapped to the top of their car. Can you imagine seeing a Richard Serra?!

ANYWAY, there is one asterisk to this open-air transport method: road salt. In cold climates, the salt used to treat icy roads can corrode the steel in ways that aren’t very nice. So let’s say that a Serra piece has to travel through New York City in February, two days after a storm. The sculptures would need additional protection. The material is tough, but it’s not invincible.

For the SFMOMA installation, the process started long before the piece reached the building. First, after a conservation review, construction cranes loaded the sculptures onto flatbeds. They crossed the city that way, exposed, enormous, occupying traffic lanes.

Once they arrived at the museum’s loading area, industrial-scale gantries took over.

Then came the particularly tricky part: sequence. The pieces had to go in back to front. Last position first, front position last. Get it wrong, and you’ve boxed yourself in. The installation is a puzzle, and if you’ve boxed yourself in, you’ve failed.

The only way out is to take something back out, which, at 500,000 pounds, is not a casual decision.

It sucks.

This kind of installation is discussed, diagrammed, and rehearsed in planning meetings for months before anyone touches the work. Every variable is accounted for in advance because on install day, there’s one chance to get it right.

When the museum is built around the work

Sometimes the work is just so big that the building has to be built around it.

The work comes first. The building comes second.

When I visited the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London last year, my eyes, like many, were instantly drawn to Trajan’s Column. How the h*ll did they get this in here?

Turns out the V&A hired a military engineer to design the Cast Courts specifically to house the collection’s largest casts: the Trajan column in two parts, and wide enough to fit the 17-meter-wide copy of the Portico de la Gloria.

Another example is the U-505, a German submarine captured by the U.S. Navy in 1944, on permanent display at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It is 251 feet long. It is not going in or out of any door. An entire wing of the museum was constructed around it.

The submarine didn’t come to the museum. The museum came to the submarine.

In my Anatomy of an Exhibition essay, I wrote about how much invisible work goes into putting a show together. To me, large-scale sculpture is the least invisible version of it all.

When I stand in front of large or heavy sculptures, I think less about the curatorial logic (although this is still very important!) and more about the physical one. The people who assessed the weight, planned the path, built the crate, drove the truck, operated the crane, operated the gantry, placed the straps, lowered a 2,000lb sculpture within a ½” of its position, and bolted it into its final place.

Let’s all raise a glass to the art handlers, shall we?

The next time you’re standing in front of something that has no logical business being inside a building, I hope you’ll ask the question I can’t stop asking.

How did it get in here?

The answer is always the same. More carefully than you’d think.

As always, thank you so much for reading.

Best,

Alya

Think of any gallery space that you know. Think of the color of the walls, how the paintings are hung or sculptures displayed, how much space is in between the objects, and how you move through the space. Odds are that you are imagining a modernist “white-cube” gallery with white walls, a single row of paintings at eye level or a scattering of sculptures on white pedestals, and in either case, generous breathing room between them. And major kudos if you are not.

More often than not, galleries and museum spaces are designed to be “neutral.” A tabula rasa for art to be displayed. It’s like display and exhibition design have no opinions.

I work at the Guggenheim, a building that is almost the antithesis of this neutral white cube. Every exhibition I work on has to work in harmony with our iconic ramp: its slope, its built-in circulation path, the way it makes “eye level” a moving target, and many, many other variables (stay tuned for a future post). I think about the politics of display as my career, and lemme tell you: the display always has opinions. The display is always doing something.

The white cube has become such a museum standard that we don’t even recognize that there is history and intentional decisions behind it. This is because two specific exhibitions in the early 20th century made their opinions so dominant that we stopped recognizing them as choices at all.

Those moments are MoMA’s founding hang in 1929, and the exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1928, also at MoMA in 1938.

Together, these exhibitions built the room you walk into every time you enter a museum. And neither of them was neutral for a single second.

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Most people have never heard of exhibition design. Until few years ago, neither had I.

I didn’t know exhibition design existed until I was already deep into an architecture career I thought I would have forever. Now, I’m an exhibition designer for the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. The path between those two things was not straight.

For those who are new here and don’t know what exhibition designers do: we are responsible for how a show physically exists in space. Exhibition designers don’t decide what’s in a show (that’s the curator), and we certainly don’t make the art (that’s the artist), but we design nearly everything in between. The walls, the pacing, the path, and the feeling you get before you've even looked at a piece (I’ve written an entire piece about exhibition design here).

The question I get more than any other is: “how did you get your job at the Guggenheim?”

Here’s my answer.

Before anything else, I couldn’t write this essay without crediting my parents. My mom and dad made me believe that I could do or become anything. And, they weren’t just saying it. My dad grew up in a town of less than 500 people to become a U.S. Senator, and my mom, a Syrian immigrant, opened her restaurant at 46 years old and is now a two-time James Beard Semi-Finalist. To them, nothing is unachievable if you work hard enough. I would be nowhere without that same stubbornness and belief.

That being said, I grew up in the midwest mostly around doctors and lawyers. I didn’t know many career paths outside of those two fields. I'm a born hypochondriac, so medicine was out. I also do not enjoy confrontation, so law was equally unappealing. What I did love, were the arts and mathematics. So at a pretty young age, my parents steered me toward architecture. I was immediately obsessed.

The more I learned, the more certain I became that architecture was the field for me. I pursued my architecture degree at Northeastern University and my major quickly became both my identity and my religion. I spent my first Friday night of college in the architecture studio, not because I had to, but because I was genuinely so excited (nerd alert!). Zaha Hadid became my idol and I cried when she passed away during my second year. My ultimate goal was to design a skyscraper and add it to the Boston skyline. (Yes, this was directly inspired by Ted Mosby).

After graduation, I went straight to grad school at Columbia University for my masters in architecture. For reference, to become a licensed architect in the U.S., you need a professional degree, +3,700 working hours under a registered architect, and to pass six intensive exams. And oh man, I was in it. I was ready.

Despite going to grad school during covid, my years at Columbia were among my favorite. I met some of my best friends, fell in love with New York City, and my education reframed how I thought about architecture. It stopped being purely a design practice and became something bigger, a tool for community impact. My ambitions shifted from building ivory towers to something that felt more urgent and more meaningful. Specifically, I wanted to find architectural solutions for humanitarian response in emergent disaster situations.

And then, like so many people with meaningful ambitions, I went corporate.

I had interned at the firm the summer before graduation and liked it enough to go back. It felt like a safe place to start my career. I worked on a mixed-use high-rise residential building, and was learning a lot. I liked my colleagues. The hours were long but not the horror-story-kind-of-long that is frightengly common in NYC architecture firms. By most measures, it was a good job. The plan was to complete my licensing hours, pass my exams, and eventually do something that actually aligned with my humanitarian ambitions.

Then, about eight months in, my personal life fell apart.

I won't get into the details, but between navigating that, intense working days, long work hours, studying for my architecture exams, and an hour commute each way to the office, I was hollowing out. Finally one night, a close friend looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I don’t think you are enjoying your job.”

*cue the identity crisis

He was right, and it was terrifying. I was burned out - but I wasn’t even passionate about the thing burning me out. I had wanted to be an architect my whole life! I didn’t know a world outside of it! What the h*ll was I doing?!

So, I started looking for a new job. Still in architecture, but something smaller and calmer. During the job search, a different friend sent me a job posting for a junior designer position at Standard Issue Design, a small full-service design firm specializing in pop-ups and retail exhibitions for heritage furniture brands. She pitched it as a low-key detour, something fun while I got my footing back before eventually returning to architecture.

Even if it was only temporary move, I was so nervous to even consider leaving architecture. I applied for the job, but interrogated each one of my interviewers just as much as they interrogated me. I had to give myself any semblance of clarity that this was a good idea.

Something must have clicked because I took the job.

My first project at Standard Issue was the opening exhibition for the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity in Richmond, CA - a dream project! I had learned about Charles and Ray Eames in school, but never thought I would encounter their work again - let alone this closely. I remember sitting in meetings and and absolutely buzzing: learning about the objects we were working with, brainstorming with my coworkers, and developing narratives and journeys within a space. It was the first time since school that I felt genuinely inspired by work.

During my time at Standard Issue, I also designed a table out of fabric tubes and cardboard for Designtex during Chicago Design Days, and led the spatial design for the MillerKnoll’s archive and exhibition in their Design Yard after the historic merger between the two major furniture companies Herman Miller and Knoll. I was good at my job, I was learning, and I was happy.

Eventually though, I started to feel like I was outgrowing the role. I continued to really enjoy my job, but was ready for a new challenge. At that point, architecture was out of the question, but I wasn’t sure what was next.

When I started reflecting and trying to figure out what I wanted next, one thing kept coming up: the part of the job I loved most wasn’t the designing, it was learning about the objects. At my time at Standard Issue, I had absorbed more about mid-century furniture and the designers of the 1940s–70s than I had in years of school. I loved every moment of it. Museums had been in the back of my mind for a while - a classmate from both undergrad and grad school had been working as an exhibition designer at the Met. So the field was on my radar, but I still knew almost nothing about it. But I loved art, and loved learning about art, so my curiousity was piqued.

Coincidentally, one of my coworkers at Standard Issue was also a Met alum who had worked there for over a decade. We had a great working relationship and I trusted her enough to be honest: I might want to leave my job and make a move toward museum exhibition design. But, I didn’t know if I was qualified for or even what the job really entailed.

She didn't hesitate. That same day, she connected me with exhibition designers at almost every major museum in New York City. Within the next two weeks, I scheduled coffee or zoom dates with all of them, and similar to my interviews at Standard Issue, I interrogated them relentlessly. What's it like to work directly with artists? What’s it like to work with curators? What other departments do exhibition designers interface with? What does the bureaucracy of a museum look like from the inside? What problems catch you off guard? And, my ultimate curiosity, how did they get that massive sculpture into the museum?

By the end of it, it was decided. I wanted to be an exhibition designer.

Lucky for me, the Guggenheim was hiring.

The first response to my application for the Guggenheim came while I was home in South Dakota for Thanksgiving, eating lunch at my mom’s restaurant. I got an email that the hiring director had a window to talk within an hour, so I called an uber and immediately went home. During the drive, I had a friendly driver and so I began chatting with her about the situation. She was more excited about it than I was. Before I got out of the car, she asked me to write about the potential job offer in her prayer journal which she carries with her everwhere.

“Midwest Nice” is absolutely a real thing.

Three more rounds of interviews followed. One with my current boss, one with the larger exhibition design team, and one with an exhibition manager and a curator. Every time I got an email about the next round, I was so eager and excited that I would reply immediately with some version of I’m free right now, should we just do it now? Unhinged behavior.

Because I had no museum experience, I also studied obsessively for each round: the institution’s history, major past exhibitions, tight narratives around every project in my portfolio. At my final round, the very first question was: “Why do you want to work at the Guggenheim?”

I froze.

That was the one question I had not prepared for. But then I remembered, it’s literally the Guggenheim, and everything fell into place.

My job offer came the day after Christmas while I was standing in a Christmas market in Salzburg, Austria with my mom. The hiring director emailed me asking for my availabilty for her to call to officially give me the offer. Again, I replied with some version of I’m free NOW, and my mom and I booked it back to the hotel. She called and I got the job. After physically restraining myself from screaming, my mom and I walked back to the market and got mulled wine to celebrate. My mom also bought me an authentic Austrian hat.

And, that’s my story.

I want to emphasize, this was my path to becoming an exhibition designer. I wouldn’t exactly call it efficient and I definitely wouldn’t call it replicable. I also don’t think it was accidental. Every step gave me something I needed for the next one. I never would have gotten to the Guggenheim without Standard Issue, and I never would have gotten Standard Issue without architecture. Even my time in the corporate world left me with skills I still use.

So instead of (wrongly!) telling you to copy my route, here’s what I think actually matters.

The skills that matter in exhibition design.

At the core of exhibition design is the ability to skillfully and intuitively think in 3D. Most of my friends are architects or designers, so I sometimes forget that not everyone automatically pictures a room when they read a floor plan.

As I’ve described before, curators and artists determine what goes where and why. Exhibition designers figure out how it will exist in physical space: how people will move through it, what they’ll see first, where the pacing slows down or opens up. We also design the circulation itself: the path a visitor takes through a show is a design decision, and it shapes everything about how the work is experienced. Because of all of this, the ability to think in 3D is critical and it is the skill that sets exhibition designers apart and makes them invaluable in the exhibition process. It also comes in handy in early design conversations to quickly gauge how many paintings will fit comfortably on a wall or if a 7-foot sculpture will feel overpowering in a 10-foot room.

The other essential skill is creative problem-solving. In practice, this means being comfortable with constraints. Nothing ever goes perfectly. There is no perfect building, no perfect exhibition, and no moment where all the conditions align perfectly with a piece of art. A large part of our job is finding intelligent solutions when things don’t go as planned. Designing around problems has become such second-nature to me that I think I’d struggle in a world where the sky was the limit. Give me a messy problem over a blank slate any day.

Practically: it is important to be fluent in 3D modeling software (I use Rhino) and a rendering output (I use both Enscape & V-Ray). You should also be comfortable drafting traditional 2D drawings like plans, sections, and elevations and as well as more detailed fabrication drawings. Additionally, we keep physical models to quickly work through ideas internally, so physical modeling and 3D printing skills are also useful. Finally, and I know it’s cliche, but none of these technical skills matter without strong communication and organizational habits. Exhibition designers sit at the intersection of many departments and the details are very important.

The career advice I wish I had

Invest in your working relationships - not strategically, just genuinely. The people who have opened the most doors for me weren’t contacts I made for networking purposes, they were coworkers I liked and trusted. Those were the people who knew me well enough to advocate for me or connect me to the right person at the right time. You never know how a boss or coworker can change your career. I never would have become an exhibition designer if I hadn’t first felt comfortable enough to tell my coworker I was thinking about leaving.

In a similar note, reach out to people, even if it’s been years. Traditional networking events kind of freak me out, so instead I like to reach out to existing connections I have, no matter how long it has been. Former professors, old classmates, past coworkers, friends of friends - it’s all fair game. I have always found that people are happy to reconnect, and in my opinion, a one-on-one coffee is far less intimidating than entering a room full of strangers. Even if they can’t help directly, you never know who someone might know.

Finally, don’t let an early job feel like a permanent identity. I remember during my last semester of grad school, so many of my classmates (myself included) spent so long trying to find a job that was “the perfect fit,” somewhere we could see ourselves for the long haul. When I left my architecture firm after less than a year, I agonized over what it would look like on paper. Turns out, nobody cared. To clarify, I’m not suggesting that you change jobs every eight months, but if something isn’t working, you don’t have to stay. Especially early in your career, I personally think trying things and moving on should not be considered a failure, it’s how you figure out what you actually want.

At any job, you should be doing at least one of three things: learning, earning, or enjoying. My first two jobs were heavy on learning. Now I’m heavy on enjoying (but am also still learning!). Not every job has to be the destination. Some of them just get you closer.

It feels so embarrassing to say but I really feel like exhibition design chose me as much as I chose it. I didn’t find this field by being strategic, but rather found it by listening to what lit me up and following it. The Guggenheim wasn’t the goal, but it was the result. Now, I feel so lucky to work at a job that I genuinely love. It truly is my dream job.

One of my favorite parts about starting my substack has been all of the students discovering exhibition design for the first time. I hope something in here was useful to you, whether you want to be an exhibition designer or you’re just trying to figure out your own next move. And of course, if you have questions I didn’t answer, my DMs are open.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting this newsletter. It means more than I can say.

-Alya

This also means I know what went into the decisions most people walk right past.

Let me just say that nothing in this show was an accident. Every decision: the color of the walls, the height of a platform, the seating placements came from a lot of deep thinking, long conversations, and countless, countless studies. Most of that work disappears into the background, some of it becomes treasures hidden in plain sight.

I’m going to show you where to look.

If you've already seen the show, I guarantee that you missed some things. If you haven't been (or can’t make it), I promise these are still fun insider secrets to know. This is another long post - so grab a drink and settle in!

A few disclaimers: (1) All opinions and thoughts are my own and not affiliated with the Guggenheim Foundation! (2) I am an exhibition designer and NOT a curator - I will be talking about design moves only. (3) While I’m happy to offer a glimpse behind the museum curtain, I will never share anything artists have chosen to keep private. I deeply value the relationships and trust artists place in me, and I never want to compromise that! Besides, a little mystery is part of what keeps the magic of art alive ;)

Before we get started, a quick word about Carol:

Carol is genuinely one of the most lovely people I have ever met. Her résumé is both long and googleable (I won’t go into it in this essay, but you can read more about her here). But what you can't google is how, despite her accolades, she is anything but pretentious. She is warm and generous but also speaks with such intelligence you wonder if there is an encyclopedia in her brain. I highly recommend checking out her interview with Frieze to catch a glimpse of her brilliance.

When people ask me to describe Carol, I often say “If Carol was your hero and you met her in person, you would leave that conversation more in love and in awe of her.”

Her show at the Guggenheim is the culmination of a 25-year career, and it is absolutely packed with things most visitors will walk right past.

Let’s remedy that.

There is a Joan Miró mural hiding inside the walls of the Guggenheim.

In the 1960s, Joan Miró and his collaborator Josep Llorens Artigas were commissioned to create a ceramic mural to be permanently installed in the walls of the guggenheim. Then, for various logistical reasons, a false wall went up in front of it. And it stayed, and stayed.. and stayed… until almost everyone forgot about the hidden Miró.

Carol brought it back, for the first time in decades. When you step on to the ramps, the first thing you see is a dark wall with a diamond-shaped cutout revealing the mural behind it. Through it: the mural is on public view for the first time in years. That opening is Carol’s. She wanted visitors to have access to this little-known piece of the building’s history, and so she built it into the show.

Behind the scenes, the decision to remove the wall came with a real uncertainty. After being sealed off for so many years, no one knew what we would find when the mural would be finally exposed. We all held our breath as the wall came down and our first glimpse emerged. Thankfully, it held up remarkably well. I’m almost certain you could hear the sighs and laughs of relief from several blocks away.

Even so, a team of conservators spent a full week meticulously cleaning and restoring it for its big debut.

The show is in reverse-chronological order, and it shows in the paint.

Most retrospectives start at the beginning and walk you through an artist’s career in chronological order. Carol did the opposite. The show opens with her most recent work and takes you back in time as you ascend. By the time you reach the top of the ramps, you’re standing at the beginning of her career.

The paint tells you exactly what’s happening. But only if you catch it, of course.

We worked closely with the paint company Farrow & Ball to develop over 40 unique shades of grey to coat the back walls of the Guggenheim, shifting gradually from dark to light as you climb. Deep, moody charcoals at the bottom subtly transition to bright, barely-there greys at the top. The dark charcoals at the bottom compliment the vibrant colors of her more-recent steel works, while the lighter shades are in perfect harmony with the minimalist shelf works and assemblages in her early career.

No single step feels dramatic - most people don’t even notice it happening!

The floor in the High Gallery isn’t the real floor

The High Gallery is a smaller gallery off of the ramps, and the only space in the Guggenheim rotunda that can accommodate taller works (hence the aptly name *High* gallery). Carol filled the space with a suite of brand-new sculptures called Sweet Charity I–VI (yes, named after the musical). These tall, stilt-like artworks put her signature style on full display: a mix of raw steel, her polished steel “polka-dots,” and my personal favorite, her bent and crinkled steel tubes molded and painted in a way that feels like fabric.

I am digressing, but here’s a quick word on how Carol fabricates these sculptures simply because I find it capitivating. The beautiful crinkly and colorful elements originate from industrial steel tubes. She uses large-scale hydraulic presses to generate her signature folds, and then uses a specific matte paint to give them that super satisfying lux-and-plush feeling. Despite using such intense and heavy processes, the end result makes you believe it was fluid and graceful.

“The artist rejects the masculine-coded heroics associated with steel sculpture in favor of a fracture that appears contingent and improvisatory, as she cajoles her intractable material to behave in different ways. ‘Machismo needs you to know how difficult it was,’ she explains. ‘I want you to think it was effortless.’” (Rapture Circuit: Carol Bove’s Settings by Katherine Brinson, the curator of the show)

How cool is she?! I should also mention that she does all of this in her studio in Brooklyn. What a bad*ss!

Anywaysssssss, back to the High Gallery. The space itself is painted a deep charcoal grey with dark carpet which transports you into a different environment when you enter in from the ramps. Not only is it dark, but also it is hushed - the carpet serves another role to dampen any sounds echoing from the rotunda. Whenever I enter into the High Gallery, I feel like stepping into a forest where each sculpture reads like a towering tree trunk. Mmmm! I love it.

But here’s a small detail that you probably didn’t notice: the steel bases of those sculptures sit perfectly flush with the carpet. Seamlessly.

That’s not magic. That’s a brand new wood subfloor with carpet on top, built specifically for this show. During install, a subfloor was constructed with precise cutouts so each steel base drops in exactly level with the surface around it. It’s one of those fun exhibition design details that is best when no one notices it, which means we did our job.

The shiny spine of discs are recycled from the facade of the Met.

You can’t miss it. From wherever you are in the rotunda, you can see the shimmering spine of six large discs running down the ramps.

These discs are repurposed from Carol’s Met Facade commission, The séances aren’t helping (2021). In her artist’s statement for the Met, Carol describes the discs:

“They register periodic alignments in the cyclical interaction of the sun and earth, a reminder that scale—in space and in time—is always relative.” (Met Museum)

Whether on the streets of 5th avenue, or inside the Guggenheim spiral, the discs mess with your sense of space. As you look at them, you see reflections of spaces you can’t quite place. They feel like portalas. One of my favorite things to do whenever I’m on site is to look through the mirrors and try and pin-point where the reflection is coming from. It’s harder than you think!

My favorite reflections come from the first overlook on the ramps. From this specific spot, the discs reflect the frames of the skylight above so that you see a perfect triangle, a circle, and another triangle. Also, if you look up at the ceiling at the same place, you can see the water from the fountain below reflected back through a sculpture with another disc (glass this time!) placed in the fountain on the rotunda floor (unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to capture this in photograph - I guess you’ll have to come and see it yourself!).

You can’t make this sh*t up.

The aluminum panels are placed using math. Yes, actual mathematics.

As you exit the High Gallery, you’re greeted by the first of Carol’s aluminum panels. At first glance these panels may not seem like much. But to me, it’s in the color pairings where these artworks shine. In a recent interview, Carol has said that if she weren’t an artist, she would have been a color scientist. I think these panels are proof she might already be one. The color pairings feel effortless but I know they were anything but.

The aluminum panels become a motif and seemingly dance across the building. But, what looks like a casual, almost random arrangement is actually governed by precise mathematical placement. As part of the installation process, Carol gave us equations for us to calculate each panel’s left-to-right and front-to-back position in space.

The panels are also hung in such a way that are directly vertical from one another. If you have ever sat down and studied a cross-section of the Guggenheim’s ramps (which is probably only like 5% of you lol), you may be able to recognize how deliberate of a choice this was. The ramps get progressively deeper as you ascend, meaning that the walls get further and further back.

Carol uses the panels to subtly, almost invisibly, call attention to that architectural quirk. The panels on the upper ramps don’t hang flat against the back wall but instead hover in front of it. Easy to miss. Completely intentional.

Carol exaggerates the building’s slope on purpose.

Here’s something almost everyone at the Guggenheim knows: you rarely hang things level.

The ramps slope at 3 degrees, which sounds minor until you’re standing on them. If you hang a work perfectly level with the earth (like you would in your home, or literally any other museum in the world), it looks like it’s tipping over. So, to counter that we hang everything at an angle either 3 degrees (to match the ramps) or something very close to it to make it read straight to the eye. It’s practically muscle-memory.

Carol did the opposite.

Instead of compensating for the slope, she exaggerates it. The platforms in her show are built dead level to the earth, which means the depth changes with the ramp underneath them and the Guggenheim tilt becomes impossible to ignore. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The best place to experience this is Foamy Saliva of a Horse (2011) (yes, you read that name correctly) which is a single work that spans across three bays. Carol insisted on keeping a perfectly level surface throughout - that is unheard of! The result is that when you meet the platform, it towers over people at a whopping 5 feet! But, by the time you reach the other end bays later, the height is only 2 feet. The work stays flat. The building does not.

Equinox (2012) is another example, and it comes with its own backstory. When this piece was shown at MoMA, it sat on a low white platform: clean, simple, straightforward. You can’t do that at the Guggenheim. To start, the dimensions of the platform don’t fit. To follow, a level platform on a sloped floor would look like it’s sliding off the building. Instead of designing an entirely new platform, Carol created one that is level and collides into the architecture in an assertive way. Most artists fight the Guggenheim. Carol made it part of the work.

The soldier is missing the top of his head because of a render I made.

As part of the show is a 3D-printed reproduction of an ancient soldier. Kind of random, right?

This piece was part of her 2025 project Carte blanche à Carol Bove at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, where she selected artifacts from the museum’s historical collection and then made 3D printed replicas so visitors could freely touch and feel them to gain a full understand of each object. Isn’t she an absolute genius?

Again, I digress but, for those who cannot make it to the show, I need to tell you about her “tactile library” in the Simon Reading Room. Carol’s work is exceptionally tactile in nature, and the tactile library is Carol’s opportunity to bring materials from throughout her show that you can (safely) be touched and played with to your heart’s desire! Her painted, molded steel looks so soft and satisfying you just want to rub your cheek against it. There are also peacock feathers, seashells, chains that feature in her earlier work - all items that scratch an itch in your brain when you play with them. And she drops new items off every week!

Back to the soldier: loook closely at its head. The top of it is cleanly cut off, perfectly parallel to the ceiling above it. It looks like it was almost made for the museum?

You’re not imagining it. The original sculpture was too tall for the space. During the design process, I made a quick render to illustrate exactly how much the sculpture was going to collide with the ceiling. I sent it over mostly as a practical heads-up, with a series of other solutions of how we could accommodate it.

Carol loved the original render, so she took a hot knife to the top of the soldier’s head. Poor guy.

There’s a random couch, but it actually isn’t random at all.

As you turn onto the first overlook of the ramps, not only do you see the spine of discs across the rotunda but there is also a random couch that feels like it fell out of a 1960s living room?

Sit in it. Seriously. My god, it is comfy. But also file it away because it’s going to mean something very different by the time you reach the top.

The last piece in the entire show is Richard Berger’s My Couch. An inverted couch suspended in fishing wire, its elements hypnotically swaying in the air.

Carol first saw this piece when she was 8 years old in Berkeley, California. It sparked something in her, and it was one of the first works of art that she felt a connection to. Decades later, when she became a successful artist, she hunted down and bought it (now, that’s wealth).

Remember the reverse chronology that I mentioned earlier? The show ends where Carol began. The last thing you see is the first thing that made her an artist. *chills*

Another inside scoop: there is a curved stanchion is placed in front of it. This is not only to prevent people from touching the work, but also because the wind created by people walking by causes the wires to tangle! And, apparently it’s an absolute b*tch to undo.

The biggest secret of all: the rotunda floor is free.

Technically speaking, tickets are only checked when you step onto the ramps. So, technically speaking, the rotunda floor is open to the public at no charge.

Carol was quick to point this out, and then take full advantage of it. She designed and fabricated chess tables and sets. Inspired by the pickup chess games you find across New York City, she wants to encourage people to come and play a game (or two!) before either seeing the show or just going on with their day.

Near the chess tables, there also a minimalist arrangement of plants near the window. Here, Carol takes cues from the Japanese practice of floral arrangements (ikebana) to create the same gesture, but at the scale of a building. Each Friday before the museum opens, Carol comes with a new selection of plants, puts her headphones on, enters into her flow state and arranges her plants. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

Carol often speaks about how museums should nourish the body just as much as the soul. Whether you are playing chess, or enjoying the view, this perfectly curated third-space is a perfect example of that. Oh and on weekdays, if you’re lucky, a member of her studio may offer you tea.

This gesture is a perfect example of Carol’s generous personality. She took the part of the museum that belongs to everyone and actually treated it that way.

Have I mentioned how much I love this show? Or how much I think Carol is a genius?Because I love it and she absolutely is.

As always, thank you to each and every one of you who has subscribed and supported this newsletter. Seeing you react so positively means everything and reading each one of your comments puts the silliest, widest smile on my face.

You have until August 2 to visit Carol’s show at the Guggenheim - go! go! go! And when you go, please tell me and let me know what you think! And please, feel free to ask any more questions. My comment section and subscriber chat are open. :)

Best,
Alya

The idea that anything other than the mystical appearance of art was involved would have genuinely astounded me.

It wasn’t until I started my career as an exhibition designer that I understood the sheer volume of thought, time, work, and resources that go into putting a show together. So grab yourself something to drink, find a snack, and buckle in, this is a long one! Let’s break it down together.

Art Placement

Let’s start with the obvious: the art itself, and where it goes. This is the curator’s domain.

Curators shape the overall vision, meaning, and experience of a show. The selection and placement of works tells the story they want to tell, signaling relationships, relevance, and narrative within a collection of work. Art placement happens early, in close collaboration with the living artist and exhibition designer (hey, that’s me!), right at the very start of the planning process.

Curators either are, or become, deep experts in the work being shown. Hearing them talk through an exhibition is breathtaking. Curators speak about art like old friends, with intimacy, precision, and affection. I have to actively stop myself from gawking every time.

Floor Plan & Traffic Flow

The floor plan is a collaboration between the curator, living artist, and the exhibition designer, and it typically happens in tandem with art placement in the early design of a show.

Circulation, sight lines, and the highlighting of key objects are all mission-critical conversations. You want visitors to move through a show naturally and intuitively. You want them to be comfortable, curious, and never confused or claustrophobic. Nobody wants to feel crammed while contemplating a Picasso or feel lost in a hallway when there’s a Rothko around the corner.

The Art Handlers

Yes, there is an entire profession about art handling. And no, I cannot do it. When I first started working at a museum, a few friends excitedly asked this. Lolz, absolutely not - the liability alone!

Art handlers have a highly specialized skill set. They wear gloves, unpack pieces with extraordinary tenderness, are fluent in reading art manuals (yes, some individual works come with entire manuals dedicated to their installation), and install each work with a precision and care that is genuinely beautiful to watch.

Wall Color

I’d be willing to bet you can’t tell me the wall color of the last exhibition you visited. And I’d also bet that your experience would have been substantially different if it had been painted another shade.

The era of the all-white modernist cube is fading (for the most part!). Wall color is a powerful tool in setting the atmosphere of a show. It’s subtle but transformative. Think of it like a wine pairing: the color is chosen to complement the work on display. Wall colors can also function as wayfinding, guiding visitors through different areas without a single sign.

Wall color decisions involve the curators, the artist (if living), the exhibition designers, and sometimes the graphic designers. Every curator and exhibition designer I know has a favorite color to use in a show (mine is purple, because I am, unabashedly, a regal girly). I’ve also heard a rumor that the MET does not like to use green paint, but you did not hear that from me!

Temporary Walls

Walls go hand in hand with the floor plan, and temporary walls are built all the time for exhibitions. That perfectly proportioned wall a work is hung on? Almost certainly constructed specifically for this show.

But walls can do more than hold art. They can direct circulation, divide a space to support a narrative, or carve out an entirely new room for a video installation, say, or an immersive environment, etc. They are, quietly, one of the most versatile tools in an exhibition designer’s kit.

Pedestals

Ah, pedestals. An exhibition designer’s claim to fame.

Pedestals elevate and protect works, and allow objects to be enjoyed from all angles. They are designed with the viewing height of most visitors in mind, and critically with wheelchair users in mind too. We want art to be accessible for all!

Vitrines

Think of vitrines as the pedestal’s slightly hypochondriatic cousin, except the hypochondria is a little warranted. A vitrine is a pedestal with a glass enclosure, used to display more fragile or precious objects. The glass defends against touching, dust, humidity, theft, and damage.

And these things are sealed. How sealed? During the art heist at the Louvre last year, the thieves used angle grinders to get inside the vitrines. Angle grinders!!!

Platforms

Platforms are another member of the pedestal family. They create a stage for taller works. A platform’s purpose, however, is less about comfortable viewing height and more about establishing a subtle yet elegant boundary to create distance between the object and the visitor.

If platforms could speak, they’d probably say something like: “Hey. Cool object. You can admire it, but preferably from over there.”

Walls, pedestals, vitrines, and platforms are all designed and placed by the exhibition designers, again, in close collaboration with the curator and/or the living artist. Once the design is finalized, shop drawings go to the fabrication team to be built (most large museums have an in-house fabrication team!). Then, walls are constructed and built elements are installed by the exhibition construction crew during installation.

Many museums keep a stock of pedestals and vitrines which can rotate across shows. At the Guggenheim, however, because our building is so beautifully handmade, our floors are ramped, and almost nothing is a straight line, approximately 95% of our pedestals are built from scratch for every single exhibition.

Object Mounts

If you ask me, object mounts are the real hidden gems of any exhibition: an art form in themselves.

The most visible example of object mounts are from works hung from the ceiling - the object mounts are created to attach the hanging element to the museum ceiling. But the less obvious cases are everywhere: almost every freestanding object in a show is secured to either its pedestal or the building structure. Object mounts protect artworks from art pick-pockets (have any of you read The Art Thief?! Unreal) and against what we call “walking off.”

Here’s something wild: visitors experience exhibitions by moving through them, but every footstep sends tiny vibrations through the floor and structure. The vibrations aren’t strong enough to be felt by humans, but objects can. Over time, a sculpture can slowly shimmy itself out of position, inch by inch. Object mounts exist to stop the chaos: no drifting, no wobbling, no theft, no dramatic plunge to the floor. MVP!

Audio/Visual Components

Whenever you watch a video or listen to an audio piece in a museum, know that an entire team made that experience possible. The A/V team handles the invisible essentials: monitor specs, projector choices, speaker placement, cable wrangling, troubleshooting. Simply put, they make the experience feel seamless instead of cursed.

There are also dedicated A/V conservators, which I find fascinating. Their job is to preserve, update, and maintain time-based media works for future generations, ensuring the artist’s original viewing and listening specifications survive alongside the piece itself. Those works on VHS tapes, Floppy Discs, and CD-ROMs are not going to convert themselves!

Benches/Seating

Oof, this is getting long. Let’s do what any good museum would do and take a seat for a minute.

That is, quite literally, the purpose of benches and seating in museums. Now, there could be an entire substack publication on museum seating alone, but I will keep this short (for now!).

Lately, there has been a lot more conversation about museums’ relationship to the human body, and a welcome push toward more humane spaces - and I’m here for it! Nobody wants to encounter a Salvador Dalí painting with aching feet and a tired mind.

More on this another time, but if you can’t wait, here is a piece by my former colleague Aubrey Knox, now Director of Exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts, who is an advocate for more humane museums.

And my final note: benches don’t just magically appear. They are selected, designed, and placed by exhibition designers ;)

Wall Text & Oject Labels

The namesake of my Substack. :)

Except it’s a little ironic because my only role in wall text and object labels is deciding where they go. Curators write all the text for the exhibition, shaping the interpretation and voice of the show, and also provide all information for each object label. Then graphic designers step in. They create a visual identity to show then do the work to format it all: hierarchy, typography, readability… everything.

Exhibition designers just help figure out where it lives on the wall.

Lighting

Arguably the most important element of any exhibition and, based on your comments, the thing you’re all most curious about.

Good lighting is make-or-break. Like the wall color, it sets the entire atmosphere of a space. It can make a work sparkle or make a space feel intimate and moody. It needs to illuminate pieces of art without blinding the audience. Lighting designers also navigate color temperature, contend with natural light from windows, and carefully maintain appropriate light levels to prevent works from fading over the run of the show.

More, much more, on this soon.

Now, the truly invisible players of an exhibition.

Registrars

Remember the “magic” I mentioned at the beginning? The art that just appears in the museum? That magic has a name, and it’s the registrars.

Registrars manage all internal art logistics. They are the keepers of the art manuals, the holders of detailed records tracking where every collection work is stored and in what condition. Most visibly for an exhibition, they are also the heroes who locate works from around the world and orchestrate every inbound and outbound shipment and truck delivery with military precision. Absolute heroes. Every single one of them.

Conservation

Another more commonly known art profession - but for very good reason! Conservators have the beautiful, essential job of protecting art for generations to come. They ensure that your favorite painting is in pristine condition when you first discover it and that it is in the exact same condition when you bring your kids to see it twenty-five years later. The continuity of that experience? That's conservation.

Exhibition Managers

Without exhibition managers, our ducks would be absolutely everywhere.

They are the people who keep all of us chaotic creatives moving in the same direction and, crucially, make sure the exhibition actually happens. They manage budgets, track timelines, coordinate vendors, schedule meetings, solve problems before the rest of us even know they exist, and keep everyone on task.

They are the calm center of the storm, the leaders of the pack, and the reason ideas ever become reality.

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day but maybe they should say an exhibition wasn’t made by one person, because… oh my god?!

And that’s not even everything. This list doesn’t touch on the security personnel keeping our art safe, the docents and gallery guides who bring the work to life for visitors, the educators who organize programming, the visitor experience teams making the museum accessible and welcoming for all, or the lawyers writing all the contracts, our press and social media teams, our photographers and videographers, and on and on and on.

Ok, now that we are now all experts in reading an exhibition, let’s go through some examples together, shall we?

Let’s put everything we’ve learned to the test. Two views from MoMA’s Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start. Let’s break it down.

The art first. Works selected and placed by the curators, installed by the art handlers, secured by the mount makers. Let’s also not forget, before any of it arrived, the registrars had organized every shipment and the conservators had checked every piece.

Then the bigger moves. White walls, which are the right call for Calder’s delicate, intricate forms that pop beautifully against a clean background. A few newly constructed walls to guide the flow. Platforms for safe viewing distance, pedestals for elevation, and a small vitrine tucked around the corner in the bottom image for the more fragile works. Designed by the exhibition designer (hi!), built by the fabrication shop, installed by the construction team.

Finally, the finishing touches: the one that ties it all together. Lighting that makes Calder’s hanging sculptures feel almost alive. And the wall text, written by the curators and formatted by the graphic designers, gives visitors the context they need to go deeper.

Nothing here happened by accident. Nothing here happened by magic. Every single detail was someone’s job.

Now, let’s do more of a wild card example.

Below are two images from Role Play, held at both the Fondazione Prada at Osservatorio in Milan and Prada Aoyama Tokyo.

I’m going to leave this one open. You’ve read the whole breakdown. You know the vocabulary now: the walls, the lighting, the pedestals, the circulation, the color choices, all of it. So I want to hand it over to you.

What do you notice? What decisions can you spot?

How did you do? Whether you caught every detail or are now noticing things you otherwise wouldn’t, you are looking differently now. Welcome to the other side. :)

And that’s a wrap! Thank you if you are still reading along.

While drafting this piece, I realized I ended nearly every section with some version of: I have so much more to say about this, but I’ll save it for another post. So let’s just say… there is plenty more where this came from, and I am SO excited about it.

I also want to thank each and every one of you for every subscribe, follow, restack, comment, DM, like, and share. I have been overwhelmed (in the best possible way) by the response to this Substack. Never in a million years did I imagine there would be so many of you here so early in this journey. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I’d also love for this to be a collaborative space. Tell me what you want to learn about. Tell me what’s confusing, fascinating, boring, or irresistible. Should I share more of what I’m reading and looking at? Would you enjoy profiles on museums or people in the art and design world who inspire me (Hello Peggy Guggenheim and Lina Bo BardI)? I have a lot of ideas, but I’d love to hear yours too. My comments and subscriber chat are always open. :)

One final note: I’m currently deep in work designing the next rotunda exhibition at the Guggenheim, Taryn Simon (opening September 18 and it’s going to be soo good!). To protect both my sanity and my sleep schedule, please expect my next post in 2-3 weeks (quality > quantity).

Also, my next post will be my first for paid subscribers (eek), and it’s going to be a juicy one!

Until then, have a great week, and thank you for being here.

-Alya

My answer: “Oooof, no. You know those pedestals in the museum? Yeah, I design those.”

At that point, I see the sparkle fade. Designing pedestals doesn’t exactly sound glamorous. Consider this my long overdue rebuttal because exhibition design is, in fact, a decidedly sexy profession.

So, what is exhibition design?

In case it wasn’t clear: exhibition design is a different field than curation. As exhibition designers, we work closely with the curators and artists, but play a completely different role. Where curators decide what the world sees, exhibition designers decide how the world sees it.

Exhibition designers create the landscape on which art and objects live. We choreograph the visitor’s journey: the way you move through a space, the moment a painting stops you in your tracks, the bench that appears exactly when your feet give out. We act as the bridge between the curators and other departments such as fabrication, art handling, and visitor experience, while keeping hang heights, accessibility standards, and the overall emotional arc of the show in mind.

Think about the last exhibition you visited. How did you enter? How did you move through the space? Was there a wall that felt like it was built for that one painting? What color were the walls? And how did that color affect the art? These are the kinds of decisions visitors often don’t consciously notice, but feel. These are the decisions that transform the exhibition from simply looking at objects on walls into a memorable, immersive experience.

To put it simply, we build the stage, then disappear before the curtain rises.

Exhibition Design isn’t just for art museums.

Before joining the Guggenheim, I worked at a small design firm creating exhibitions for furniture brands including the Eames Institute and MillerKnoll. In those contexts, the exhibition design was less about being invisible and more about amplifying a brand’s identity.

At the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosities, we developed “Ray’s Table” as the centerpiece of the show: a free-form structure drawn directly from Ray Eames’ playful, iconic sketches. It wasn’t just a surface to hold objects. The table didn’t just hold objects but extended the spirit of their work and highlighted the joy and experimentation embedded in their practice.

Historical museums offer yet another approach; with fewer showstopping visuals to anchor a room, exhibition design often takes on more of a teaching role. Visitors are guided through dense, layered storylines in a way that feels accessible and engaging rather than exhausting. The Benjamin Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is a great example. A few years ago, my boyfriend and I ducked inside during a rainstorm and ended up having an unexpectedly wonderful time. Although the museum is very much geared toward children, we still say “Huzzah!” to each other to this day—borrowed from one of the games we played there.

There’s also a long history of architects working in exhibition design. The overlap makes sense: both disciplines involve shaping environments, guiding movement, and thinking in three dimensions (I also came from an architectural background).

These exhibitions often take a more visible, immersive approach. The space itself becomes part of the conversation. Take Manus x Machina, designed by OMA for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition referenced the museum’s classical architecture in form while introducing a futuristic atmosphere. The environment didn’t compete with the objects—it deepened the central tension of the show: the relationship between handcraft and machine production.

Each museum and exhibition is different: different art, different audiences, different cultural stakes, different walls. Exhibition design has to rise to meet all of it. At the Guggenheim, the stakes are particularly high, because… well.. our floors are famously and our walls are curved. There’s no such thing as a straightforward hang. Every decision requires a little more ingenuity, a little more intention, and honestly? A lot more fun.

Exhibition design is such a fun and fascinating field, and I’m thrilled that so many of you are curious about it. I’m still early in my career, and I feel like a kid in a candy shop every time I learn something new about the exhibition world.

Most days after work, I come home and talk my mom’s or my boyfriend’s ear off about whatever fascinating thing I learned that day. It occurred to me that Substack might be a better place for all of that enthusiasm—and hopefully more enjoyable for everyone involved.

I have so many stories, ideas, and behind-the-scenes details I can’t wait to share.

Thank you so much for being here.

- Alya