David Bowie was the ultimate charismatic performer, dominating the stage, seeming larger than life. To reveal his stage presence through a set of objects demanded a fusion of the stage experience with a museum’s interest in representing objects accurately. On stage, lighting serves to make a small figure in a stadium seem larger than life, the focus of attention for thousands who blend away somehow. Bringing this experience to the museum environment without show lighting or the performer himself demanded much thought about scale, representation and the relationships of costumes to light.
Each performance costume is lit in a manner representative of the original stage or video lighting in which it was presented. The manipulation of scale, both in lighting, and also through a paint scheme that plays on scale to confound the eye was critical. The postmodern vaulted galleries were largely painted black, while a midnight blue band scales the display portion of the wall and forgives the halos of light typical of museum track heads. Color and contrast are used to draw the eye.

Once the eye has been adapted to the dark, a shocking white space representing the change of period of Bowie’s style draws one back into the question of how performance and quotidian life sit side by side, before returning to worshipful darkness.

Museum lighting often sits between the curatorial, bland white light in which an object can be observed for what it is, and reverential light that treats objects as special. Yet in the original context of the pieces, a Bowie costume was never meant to see in the light of day, but on stage with performance light. Objects that have a more regular experience, a book, a document, are lit in more literal light.

Lighting systems included in-house track lighting (PAR/MR), parcans, neon and LED neon products, plus a lot of gel and paint.