Ketra, a supplier of digital lighting systems, has announced that it will be illuminating newly reinstalled galleries of medieval art, as well as additional areas at the Art Institute of Chicago, a world-renowned art museum with one of the largest permanent collections in the United States.
Chicago, Illinois (US)-based design firm Lightswitch Architectural was tasked with designing the Art Institute of Chicago’s lighting and presented the museum with the concept of transitioning to LED light using Ketra’s LED system.
According to Lightswitch, the focus in the art world is generally on high color rendering, which LED achieves, but the goal here was to optimize color temperature without sacrificing color rendering.
In order to select the right LED solution, Lightswitch and the Art Institute of Chicago compared LED sources from a number of different manufacturers in a series of mock-ups. Lightswitch focused each LED source on both a painting and an object to produce identical illumination levels and to compare each LED to the halogen sources currently used throughout the museum.
Lightswitch facilitated a side-by-side mock-up illuminating four works by French painter Claude Monet in which Ketra was compared to the museum’s existing halogen lighting solution. Lightswitch designers matched color and light levels between the wall and the paintings using Ketra’s Design Studio software and their own visual perception. Afterwards, they used a Sekonic light meter to compare the color rendering, illuminance and spectrum of the light sources illuminating the paintings.
Twenty Art Institute staff members were present to review the final results, including art curators, exhibit design staff and facilities staff. It was unanimously agreed that Ketra lighting was the correct solution for the museum going forward. The museum will be proceeding with a Ketra system for their newest gallery renovations and will continue to integrate Ketra into other spaces around the museum.
Ketra says it aims to design its system of continuous closed-loop optical and thermal feedback for color point maintenance, with consistent accuracy. Ketra’s combination of calibrated, tunable lighting, wireless control and energy savings enable the Art Institute of Chicago to have all the features they were seeking in a lighting system.
At this week’s Lightfair International in New York City, New York (US), Ketra was awarded ‘Best Conventional Retrofit and Replacement LED Lamp.’ Ketra’s submitted product was their PAR38 lamp -- the S38 -- a fully tunable, single point source lamp with internal wireless radio, and closed loop optical and thermal feedback for color point maintenance; available in multiple beam angles and lumen outputs.
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