This post is an advertorial written by an organization that serves the museum field. The views, opinions, and positions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of AAM or its employees.

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The John Michael Kohler Arts Center has been involved in the preservation, study, and exhibition of artist-built environments for nearly fifty years. The Art Preserve was created to store and display these works. Designing solutions to house and display such a diverse collection required foresight, teamwork, and attention to detail.

“It felt like the right time to have all that work in one place where scholars and other people who have a love for this type of work could see it.”

Reflecting artists’ environments

Storing and displaying artist-built environments present unique challenges. “These are instances where artists go beyond one-off pieces to create large-scale environments that they intend to be experienced as a whole rather than piecemeal,” said Sam Gappmayer, director of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. The collection includes a house covered in glitter, a complex work of sculpture that the artist believed had healing properties, and an artist’s yard that was populated by sculptures made out of concrete and found objects.

Many of the objects now featured at the Art Preserve were formerly stored in the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s underground storage facility and in off-site warehouses. The purpose of the Art Preserve was to consolidate these works under one roof, make them more accessible, and display them in a way that would give scholars and casual visitors a more complete sense of the environments that these artists created.

Creative solutions for visible storage

Art racks form “walls” to create an immersive experience and allow staff to instantly change out works on exhibit. Spacesaver’s Art Racks offer museums easy operation, enhanced security, and increased storage capacity while keeping hanging art collections protected and organized. Spacesaver offers six types of art rack systems to provide compact storage solutions for your visual art collection. Read more about this product on our Art Racks Product Page.

The design team wanted the building itself to reflect the artists’ creativity. The building is constructed of materials that many of the artists used in their work, like stone, wood, and concrete, and sculptural timbers at the building’s entrance evoke a woodland setting.

The design team worked with Spacesaver’s engineers to design creative visible storage solutions throughout the facility including a small compactor system, designed to accommodate future acquisitions, along with oversized drawers and trays to securely store small items close to an artist’s other works.

Spacesaver’s Oversized Cabinets are designed to protect collections, save space, and provide enduring solutions for institutions of all sizes. Spacesaver’s line of museum cabinets represents the future of collections care. For museums with large specimens, the Model 395 cabinet offers a remarkable 181 cubic feet of storage, making preservation and protection of oversized items a reality.

As for the small compactor system, Spacesaver’s High-Density Mobile Systems can preserve decades of historic capacity. Statistically, only 3 percent of museum collections are visible at a given time, creating a strong need for solutions that provide increased access to and capacity for storing a wide variety of artifacts. Designed to work in static applications and seamlessly integrate with Spacesaver’s wide range of industry-leading high-density mobile systems allows you to build a custom art storage shelving system for all your collection storage needs.

“A lively space”

The end result is an engaging, dynamic facility with room to grow. “It’s a lively space,” Gappmeyer said. “There were lots of good reasons to go with Spacesaver,” Gappmayer said. “I’ve always had respect for the product Spacesaver makes and the brand is solid, with a good reputation. We were able to work with Spacesaver to create solutions that reflected a storage aesthetic, but that also protected the art in ways that it wouldn’t need to be protected in a back storage room.”

Making your vision a reality

Spacesaver’s robust engineering teams and custom manufacturing capabilities can help bring your design team’s vision to reality. Contact us to learn more about how our in-house teams partner with your nearby Spacesaver consultant to optimize space while also protecting collections for generations to come.

Contact Us

Spacesaver Corporation

1450 Janesville Avenue

Fort Atkinson, WI 53538-2798

1-800-492-3434

www.spacesaver.com