A: Most importantly, the Fairweather Gallery has earned a reputation for the content of art and the display of the art. The space, planned with a “less-is-more” concept, has been designed with interiors divided into different vignettes, or rooms, which are designated by color, yet always focused on a high level commitment in display honed through many years of professional experience. The operator of the gallery, Denise Fairweather, is an allied member A.S.I.D., the American Society of Interior Designers.
The Fairweather Gallery has been planned to display salon-style, showing far more works with paintings hung floor to ceiling, oftentimes in a geometric pattern, however usually sorted by theme or size. Salon-style display is a term derived from the French Royal Academy of Painting in Paris, where in the Salon Carré (Square Salon), known as the Louvre, artwork was hung as close as possible. Today, many galleries have embraced the popularity of salon-style display, maximizing the space available to show art, such as, the Renwick gallery in the Smithsonian American Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Patrons gravitate toward salon-style often finding that groupings of smaller works add the charm to an otherwise broad expanse of unadorned wall. Art plays off each other, yet many can be optimally enjoyed one piece at a time.
The Fairweather Gallery, in terms of atmosphere, through planning salon-style display techniques, has found that this method of hanging art offers a feeling of invitation and hospitality; a space that makes patrons feel at ease.
There are special times, when a particular occasion, such as, in a permanent art installation in a hotel, that museum-style display is strategically planned.
Images featuring art hung museum-style at the River Inn at Seaside.
Most visitors are used to visiting galleries where there is one work of art hung in a horizontal slot, with a descriptive plaque listing the arts and other information, which is called the museum style of display.
“This is great if you are the creator of the art being shown a visitor’s attention is focused on your work, without distractions. Extraordinary works are able to be viewed, museum-style, usually with a sitting bench to contemplate the art.” –Denise Fairweather.
Indeed, whatever the occasion, Fairweather’s interior spaces are always unmistakably shaped for the love of quality art; for the love of being in a very special place; and to show passionate reflection for the art of display, whether art has been planned to hang museum-style or salon-style. Fairweather’s has earned a reputation for the hanging of art.
Most recently, 100 new pieces were displayed, salon-style, for Fairweather’s 100th (!) Seaside First Saturday Art Walk in March 2015. And, too, on July 4th 2015, for the Seaside First Saturday Art Walk, 76 new works of art were hung, salon-style, connecting the exhibition to 1776.
For the upcoming exhibition, ANYTHING GOES, opening August 1st, during the Seaside First Saturday Art Walk at Fairweather’s, extraordinary contemporary works of art will hang museum-style.
“It’s something you feel when you walk into Fairweather House and Gallery, I actually tingled. The concept is so inspiring that it literally raised my senses.”–Kelly Norton