Beyond Golden Clouds out the door
2011 is here and with it comes some goodbyes. For the past three months, museum visitors have been treated to the beauty and elegance of the painted screens (as well as more modern mixed media interpretations) featured in Beyond Golden Clouds: Five Centuries of Japanese Screens. However it’s time to move on into another year of exciting exhibitions, so this past week we carefully packed up these masterworks and sent them home to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Taking down a gallery is typically faster than installing the artworks initially, but still requires a great deal of coordination, patience, care, and reverence for these awesome works.
One of Jiro Okura's Mountain Lake screens is packed. Because of their great weight and the delicately affixed gold leaf surface, these screens present unique handling and transportation challenges.
Museum conservator Shiho Sasaki closely examines the condition of each screen before packing.
Museum preparation staff pack each screen in a custom travel crate. Before crating, the screens are protectively wrapped.
What’s next for our exhibition staff? We’re busy rebuilding the galleries for Bali: Art, Performance, Ritual. Where Beyond Golden Clouds was a spare and spacious gallery experience, Bali promises to be full of a different sort of energy. Keep tuned for sneak peeks as construction commences!
