Exhibition scenography is a still young discipline, which continues to question its origins and its challenges. The very term scenography, which appeared in the 1920s, refers in France to the history of theater and decor, underlines doctor of art sciences Mathilde Roman (Living in the scenographyEditions Manuella, 2025). Heir to the scene, but also invested by architects and designers, this sector of activity is at the crossroads of several skills. If general scenography was taught from 1969 at the National School of Decorative Arts, the distinction between the theatrical branch and that relating to the exhibition space gradually took place. Teaching the profession has only been an established specialization for around fifteen years. “In collaboration with the curator of an exhibition, the scenographer takes care of the staging of the works, objects, texts and everything that constitutes the content of this exhibition. […] He designs and creates the plan, the route, the presentation and hanging system, the furniture, the accessories and all the supports necessary to showcase the works, objects or other elements of content”, we can read as a professional definition on the website of the union of scenographers. Within museums, the practice of scenography appeared at the turn of the 1980s, when institutions were keen to take the visitor more into account as a “spectator”, as in live performances.
Techniques and tricks
The technical means available to scenographers are for some immediately visible (pictures, cartels, bases, podiums, windows, etc.), while others, such as highlighting using lighting, the choice of colors or the alternation of empty and full spaces, remain imperceptible to the uninitiated. So many artifices which nevertheless condition the perception of the works and are likely to create aesthetic shocks. The transmission of knowledge, but also of emotions, sometimes involves very strong scenographic choices. When it opened in 2012, the Galerie du Temps, at the Louvre-Lens, created an event by bringing together 5,000 years of art history in a single space, through works from different eras and civilizations. LeStudio Adrien Gardère, in charge of the scenography of this museum project, had chosen “to remove all partitioning and to create a terrace which overlooks the whole, offering the public a unique perspective on the history of art”. Alongside this innovative presentation, along the walls covered in anodized aluminum, a timeline punctuated space and time. Twelve years later, at the end of 2024, this emblematic gallery has been renewed by the integration of new loans of works and by a scenography signed this time by Atelier Atoy, according to an arrangement further mixing civilizations.
Discreet intervention
In the context, not of a museography but of a temporary exhibition, the scenography is put at the service of the artist’s approach or the curator’s words, “through the medium of a sensitive spatial creation, universally evocative and significant”, explains the scenographer Kinga Grzech (“The Exhibition Scenography, a mediation through space”, The Ocim Letterno. 96, 2004). Whatever its creativity, this spatial arrangement must nevertheless avoid “replacing itself with the subject of the exhibition itself”, underlines Kinga Grzech. While enhancing the architecture of the place that hosts it. It’s sometimes a headache. “Rather than imposing a route, we introduced large vertical, luminous fabric panels – “lanterns” – which create an orientation system [suite p. 40] and subtly guide visitors”, explain the designers of the Formafantasma duo responsible for the scenography of the inaugural exhibition of the new building of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art this fall. Their discreet intervention is a response to the “unprecedented parameter” constituted by the mobile platforms of the building redeveloped by Jean Nouvel.
Ecological reuse
In addition to its educational challenges of “making it known” – the stroll is supposed to give the public a meaning and keys to reading – the scenography has also, for several years, been required to integrate eco-design imperatives. “An exhibition is a source of pollution,” says the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Saint-Étienne. The MAMC+, like other cultural establishments, has therefore embarked on an ambitious environmental approach to recycling its scenographies: “plasterboards, paints, coatings, aluminum rails and uprights, composite or solid wood, screws, are just an extract from the long list of necessary materials” that the institutions now try to reuse as best they can. To meet these numerous challenges, a good scenographer must demonstrate artistic sensitivity, a very sure sense of space, solid technical skills, an excellent knowledge of the history of art… and great humility, since he works in the shadows.
