I have always wondered how museums handle really large photos. I can understand paintings because they come sort of “pre-mounted” on canvases, but what about photos? Say a museum received a gift of a life-sized Richard Avedon photo. How would that photo be mounted to show? Would it be framed? Glued to some kind of backing? I am not so much interested on how they attach it to the wall, but rather how do that prepare it for show. Any insights? The reason I ask is because I am thinking of making some large prints, like 40x60 or larger, but am not sure what to do once I get them.
The Met in NYC just had a run of displaying Avedon’s murals. They had the one of Andy Warhol’s Factory crew and one of military/ political figures among 1 or 2 others. If you haven’t seen them, he shot groups of maybe 10 people using a large format (not sure 4x5 or 8x10) and made 3-5 frames side by side to show the whole panorama of people in each mural. Very cool stuff. The prints are maybe 8-10 feet tall, when combined in the mural each mural was maybe 20-30 feet long. Each individual print of the mural was just a free hanging print on the wall. No frame, glass, mounting, etc. I think they were just clamped at the top and hung from the ceiling or the wall. Really cool presentation.