For the changing art areas of the New Indianapolis Airport, the flooring
will be epoxy terrazzo.  This may be cost-prohibitive in a regular
museum, plus it does get a bit hard on the ankles if there is too much
of it.  Otherwise it is very durable and very easy to maintain.  

At my previous museum job, the flooring was colored concrete in one set
of galleries, carpeting in another, and hardwood floor planks (fairly
narrow) in another.  The hardwood floor is difficult to maintain--hard
to disguise gouges and scuffs, time-consuming to remove paint spills,
and requires regular stripping and re-urethaning (about every 5 years)
plus periodic (about every 10 years) sanding/refinishing.  The carpeting
wears down (you can mitigate this by using super-tough commercial-grade
carpet and installing it in tiles instead of in big rolls) and of course
does not take paint spills well, although commercial-grade carpeting can
have a coating on the fibers that makes spills bead up rather than sink
in. I think we just had cheap carpeting, which has since been replaced
with upgraded carpet tiles. The colored concrete was excellent for the
reasons Stephen states below.  If you pick the color correctly (ours was
a deep reddish color somewhere between dark salmon and light redbrick)
and use a painted baseboard plus shoe molding it does not look raw at
all.

Julia Muney Moore
Public Art Administrator
Blackburn Architects, Indianapolis, IN
(317) 875-5500 x219
   
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Stephen Nowlin
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 11:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] gallery flooring

on 12/11/07 3:53 AM, Peter Morelli's electrons arrived as:

> In your gallery for changing art or history exhibitions, built or
> rehabilitated in the last 20 years, what is the flooring material?
> Does it serve you, the public, and the staff well?


Our floor is sealed cement.  It works great for our contemporary art and
design shows.  Bits of paint can be scraped off, we can drill into it to
anchor things, and patch the holes.  It's a "raw" look but fits our
aesthetic.


______________________________________
S t e p h e n    N o w l I n

Director,
Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
Art Center College of Design

http://xrl.us/williamsonGoogle
http://www.williamsongallery.net
http://www.artandscience.us
http://www.pasadenaculture.net
______________________________________

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