The Brilliance of Caravaggio
EXHIBITION DESIGN // MARKETING
Four Paintings in Focus
Client: The Toledo Museum of Art
Contract Exhibition Design Partner: Claude Fixler
It’s not an everyday occurrence to have a Caravaggio painting in your midwest museum. It’s exponentially rarer to see four Caravaggios hung together. In early 2024, the Toledo Museum of Art showcased four important early paintings by Caravaggio in conversation with works from the museum’s permanent collection. A robust marketing campaign was needed to alert visitors far and near to this exciting event; and an even more-considered gallery design was critical to highlight the spectacle of the exhibition (without overshadowing the masterpieces themselves).
Caravaggio’s brilliance can be (and has been) expounded upon in many ways. What struck me most intensely in my research phase was the true humanity of how he painted his figures. So unlike the contemporaries of his time, Caravaggio painted from life, like life, as life; the visceral nature of his paintings provides an incredible depth and physicality to the compositions. I knew that I wanted to integrate the title of this exhibition within some of the paintings—I saw the typography interwoven, layered “through” his pieces, directing viewers to see some of the smaller, intimate moments happening within these immense works.
While traditional marketing efforts needed to lean less on ornamental typography, it was still important to craft campaign language that expressed the sensual, charged nature of the paintings themselves. After developing several “word triptychs” for print pieces, I iterated on the concept within social media content, and I built slow-scope animated video spots that could utilize the same copy.
With marketing campaign work underway, the ultimate challenge of in-gallery design still needed consideration. Rather than overwhelm the intimate scenes with ancillary graphic information, it made the most sense to strip the majority of the gallery back to simple, intimate moments and sight-lines. One curatorial consideration–a timeline of Caravaggio’s purported life events–called for an approach that leaned on a menagerie of content and imagery to bring it to life.
Per a museum leadership directive to “enhance the entrance to the exhibition in a way that wows the visitors”, it made sense to use the open space on either side of the bridge to the gallery and go big. Conveniently, the three-character piece, The Cardsharps, made for an ideal fit within each major section of the wall. A secondary sheer layer of oxblood fabric obscured just enough of the painting to obfuscate the larger piece as a whole while showing just enough of their facial expressions.
