Comments on: Reference Question of the Week – 3/4/12

By: Palimpsest

Palimpsest — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:44:50 +0000

I worked at a gallery for five years, and for some reason, the rule was always that the vertical center should be 57″, which I suppose must come from old conventions passed down from museums?

By: Keegan

Keegan — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:23:18 +0000

I’m the average average!!! (Wait, does this also mean I’m Satan…?)

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:25:52 +0000

@kalgopia: I’m not sure if she was an artist or what prompted this (although, I would guess not). She was definitely away of the relative differences, but since she knew she couldn’t account for them all, she was just looking for some kind of happy medium that would please the most possible people. Most of the sites we found also said that everything depends on the variables (art, wall, lighting, colors, etc), but I think she just wanted something definite – and it was indeed fun coming up with something.

By: kalgopia

kalgopia — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:02:36 +0000

Also, you could have just searched for “average eye level”. It’s art, not rocket science. But I know, she wanted rocket science. Funny how people are, you should be proud that you made her day.

By: kalgopia

kalgopia — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:54:38 +0000

Was this patron an artist? Funny how she was so rigid with just this eye level thing, or was she? I’m an artist that has displayed lots of art, and there’s more than meets the eye to this. Such as, was that art hung at an outward/downward angle? How big is the art and the focus of it’s content? What about lighting? What about people sitting in chairs or standing on a higher level? Overall, I have found that art looks best on a wall where it’s balanced with it’s surrounding from various viewpoints. As such, the math helps a little, but it just needs to look good, and you need a good artist’s eye for that. But you know all that and I’m glad you had fun helping her. If you want to research more into this, search for proper placements for big screen TVs, as much of that applies as well.

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:53:06 +0000

I found this site on Apartment Therapy http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-hang-you-6174 and this one from an actual gallery http://www.stellersgallery.com/Resources/HowToHang.asp that might be useful in future. Former says 57″, latter says 58″ which looks like it roughly matches all of your hard work!