easy rules for hanging an art quilt show
August 24th, 2010Today I hung a solo show in my home town, and it occurs to me that some of you might be interested in some easy rules to remember when hanging a show. It isn’t rocket science!
First of all, no matter what hanging system the venue has, it won’t work without a problem. This is a promise. Especially since most gallery spaces are set up to hang pictures with wired backs, and rarely do these hanging systems fit into the eyehooks most of us put at the end of our rods. So you always need to bring a supply kit with you, which should include:
- scissors
- tape
- painters tape
- fishing line
- S hooks
- picture wire and wire cutter
- extra rods
- quilting safety pins (they must be quilting pins, if the show will hang for a while, you don’t want rust spots!)
and you can be sure that whatever you bring, there will be something else you could have used. Also, based on what happened today, I would also recommend a bottle of water and some granola bars. This took several hours, no A/C in the room, and the water and sustenance would have helped.
But on to actually hanging the artwork. I begin by organizing the pieces so that they relate in color, size and theme. This is no different whether you are hanging a solo show, a group show, or one with lots and lots of 12″ x 12″ pieces. Put together pieces that work well next to each other, and start laying them out on the floor in front of each wall.
This photo may not look like much, but here you can see the pieces laid out on the floor in the order I liked. Had this been other people’s work, I would not have put them directly on the rug, but would have put down a clean drop cloth first. For my own work, I was ok with the rug. (I shouldn’t have been)
Once the pieces are laid out, then you need to space them on the wall.
In this photo you can see that the hanging system has an upper and lower strip from which to hang the work. Frankly, if you ask me, even for framed art the lower one is much too low and the upper one too high, but they didn’t ask my opinion when they designed the space. So I hung the pieces directly on the wire hangers (with quilt safety pins on the back of each piece) on the easy to reach lower level so that I could check the spacing, make sure I liked the way the show flowed from one piece to the next, and to get them off the floor as quickly as possible.
Now the fun starts. In this situation, it was clear that every piece needed to be put onto fishing line from which they would hang on the upper level.
So step one was just to get them up and then adjust the hanging length.
The goal is to have all the pieces either start at the same level, or relate in respect to eye level. So this is when the fine tuning occurs.
Finally, the pieces are properly spaced, hung at the right level, and flow from one to another. The final task is to adjust the lighting to pin point the art, usually done by the venue.
In the end, it is usually the tweaking that takes the most time and energy. Arranging the work should not be too difficult if you just trust your instincts and your eye.



















