Hammer Museum
The World from Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA

The goal of this design was to create an environment that allowed for a comfortable appreciation of the surprisingly rich holdings of Los Angeles’ libraries and to encourage a deeper understanding of the individual pieces as objects and unique products in the history of ideas.

The primary strategy of the design was to turn the gallery inside-out — to invest the potentially overwhelming visual activity to the insides of the display cases, at the scale of the book and in the position of the visitor’s visual field.

The use of light in the gallery emerged from the environmental conditions required for displaying light-sensitive objects. We chose to exploit these limitations by allowing the glow of the vitrines and special cases to create treasure-like moments of light.

The curving cases spatially define half of the thematic sections while handrails and continuous table-height surfaces course through the gallery, unifying and simplifying the diverse elements and conditions of display in the exhibit. The rails also serve as surfaces for information.

The motif of the ‘X’ for The World From Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles suggests both a marking on a treasure map and the many “here’s” referred to in the exhibition’s title: “here” as Los Angeles, the library, or the book itself — a point of departure for many to a world of ideas.

To invite a deeper appreciation of the pieces in the exhibit, and rare books in general, each of the eight thematic sections contains a special display that highlights one or more of the books from that section and also serves as an “attractor,” drawing visitors through the show.

in collaboration with Louise Sandhaus

photos by Joshua White