One of our most exciting installation projects this year has gotten some local nice press, including our inclusion in this week’s San Diego CityBeat article by Art/Culture/Music editor Kinsee Morlan. The article is titled “Shape Shifters” and we’re proud to live up to the article’s subtitle: “Despite the down economy, these designers have carved out creative niches in the business of artful installation.” It’s been a great year for Level One, and we’re grateful to our all of our terrific clients and awesome partners in the trade.
Level One at the La Jolla Map & Atlas Museum
We were asked to come up with a creative and flexible way to display one of the largest privately owned cartographic collections in the United States, a mesmerizing passion project of founder Mike Stone, who told John Wilkens of the U-T:
“When you look back in history at decisions that shaped the world, there were people sitting around tables in rooms looking at maps. They used maps to form governments and start wars — to make decisions that still influence our lives today.”
Mike wanted to be able to rotate the collection for his new museum in a seamless manner that would maximize the impact of the images being featured, with minimal down time in making changes or damaging the walls they occupy, along with making certain that they would be securely protected.
We specified a custom Arakawa Cabeling System that tensioned off of a track system mounted to the fixed walls as well as floating mobile walls. The maps were then archivally matted and floated into plexiglas sandwich frames to try and safely display them, but still retain the feel for their original nature. Kinsee sums up what we really love about this project:
“Nails, screws, braces and cables are all hiding behind some of Gilliatt’s most seamless installs. But at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla his install is part of the display. The hundreds of historical maps are packed into the small gallery, and the rigging system, with all its tensions and wire cords, is almost reminiscent of a sailboat or ship — kind of perfect for a place filled with maps of the world’s lands and oceans.”
The cable system does indeed echo the rigging on the ships that took these maps, and the explorers that used them, around the world in another time.
We worked with our longtime partners at Tony’s Custom Framing to come up with a standardized way to mat and mount the maps with minimal impact to paper documents, some of which are over five hundred years old, and all of which are completely fascinating.
The La Jolla Map and Atlas Museum is located in the Merrill Lynch building in La Jolla- 7825 Fay Ave., Suite LL-A, La Jolla. Featuring maps that span 500 years, from the 15th century all the way to the mid-20th century,the Museum is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11AM to 4PM, on the 1st & 3rd Saturdays of each month from 11 AM to 4 PM, and by appointment.