Beyond the facets most often associated with interior decoration, a person’s taste in art leaves you with a sense of who he is.

So too with the manner in which the art is displayed.

If it pains you to consider what matters most in showing off your favorite pieces, you might be thinking too hard. There are basic considerations, but if your anxiety leaves little room for whatever emotions the art evokes, what’s the point?

A small cross-section of local art aficionados — photographers, an interior designer, a framer and staffers of art institutions — agree on several aspects of art in the home:

Lighting

Direct sunlight, although it lends a warmth to objects, is bad for most artwork, especially with prolonged exposure. This matters less with oil paintings. Watercolors, other works on paper and photographs (especially color) will fade over time. You can slow this by using halogen lights or by diffusing any nearby incandescent lights.

Rose Dodd Giroso, an interior designer whose Rose Authentica is based in Wilmington, says track lighting and eyeball lighting are popular and easy to find at hardware and home stores.

Lighting often is on Carson Zullinger’s mind — he’s a commercial photographer and a lighting consultant for the Delaware Art Museum, where he keeps his studio. But whereas he measures lighting with exactitude, most homeowners cannot. His one suggestion for them: no bright sun.

Matting

A matte board is the frame within the frame for displaying your art. Although you can choose among various styles and colors, the experts suggest keeping it simple to avoid overpowering the art.

But style and color aside, what matters most is the makeup of the matte. Acid-free is the way to go — and that goes, too, for the tape or adhesive used to keep the art in place.

“The matte boards that are a little bit cheaper in quality will ruin whatever you sandwich in there because you’re actually creating a microenvironment,” Zullinger says.

He also suggests using archival photo paper and, with digital prints, archival inks. The cheapest digital color prints, when exposed to direct sunlight, will fade in several years, Zullinger says. Under the same conditions, standard color photographs begin fading after 10 to 15 years, he says. Archival materials could extend that to anywhere from 50 to 200 years.

If the glass or plexiglass of the frame resists ultraviolet light, all the better.

Framing

Although not necessary — some people prefer to display a canvas, or to suspend a photograph with the careful use of clips — a frame can either enhance an image or detract from it.

“I keep it very simple because I want people’s eyes to go to the artwork,” says Ober R. Kline, a picture framing specialist who has worked in his Trolley Square space for 34 years and whose clients include the painters Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. Kline asks his customers “a thousand questions” before they make their decision. “It depends on the person and on the artwork.”

When it’s up to him, Kline avoids the ornate. Around a photograph he took of his brother in Arizona, for example, is an oak frame with subtle dentil and rope molding. The photo has a distinct Western look — his brother’s bearded face mostly concealed by a large hat, the scene awash in golden light. The frame complements the image.

That’s the goal — highlight the art, not the frame.

Arrangement

The most personal of factors in displaying art at home is how it’s arranged.

Danielle Rice, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum, says: “I think the point of living with art is to let the art do the decorating, and not to have such a sense of decorating that the art is secondary.”

Trust what pleases your eye. And although symmetry pleases most eyes, four walls of perfectly aligned pieces, all sized the same, could be so visually unstimulating as to render the art little more than a backdrop.

Giroso, of Rose Authentica, likes to stagger artwork. She also likes walls that have clusters of photos. It allows for an assortment of frames, with reasonable attention paid to their colors and styles, and is ideal for a mix of old and new family photos.

Giroso tells clients to include dimensionals — artful objects or unique souvenirs — throughout a room, subtly tying them to a greater theme when feasible. And she swears by the value of framing children’s artwork.

“It’s a very inexpensive way for me to spice up a house,” she says.

James P. Lecky, director and dean of the Delaware College of Art and Design, says the biggest mistake people make in hanging art is placing it too high. The line of sight, he says, should be just above about two-thirds of a painting.

source : www.delawareonline.com