FRAMED!

Hanging Monets at the Portland Art Museum

Matthew Juniper: chief preparator / Portland Art Museum

Examining a Francis Bacon triptych at the Portland Art Museum can feel like the closest possible encounter with genius. There it is, just a few feet away, close enough to parse individual brush strokes. But one man gets closer still: Matthew Juniper, the museum’s chief preparator, handles and hangs most of the works that grace its gallery walls. His job provides him with a very different interaction with visual art. “You can study it much more closely,” he says. “You can tell how heavy it is, what it smells like.”

In his 20 or so years at the museum, Juniper has handled everything from Monet paintings to Chris Burden installations. He works with curators to locate pieces in the museum’s vast vaults and organizes their presentation in exhibits. “Do they want it on the wall? On a pedestal? Do they need a mount to support it in a particular position? Do they want it lit in a particular way? Will we need any special equipment to install it?”

For special exhibitions, trucks and crates arrive bearing treasures: The Ox Cart from Vincent van Gogh, or a golden dragon head from Ai Weiwei. “In 2012, there was a piece called Blitzschlag mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch (Lightning with Stag in its Glare) by Joseph Beuys, which hangs from a large steel beam,” Juniper recalls. “I had to devise a way to suspend the piece, and we didn’t want to alter our building in any way. I worked with a contractor who helped fabricate the beam and ‘towers’ that hold the hanging portion of the sculpture. The piece barely fit into our building laying down. Once inside, it had to be righted and then rigged to lift it onto the beam.” The arrangement of the piece—a bronze slab hanging from the beam just a few millimeters from the floor—was essential to its artistic content. Gallery patrons were left to ponder the energy of the primordial; for Juniper, it was all in a day’s work.

See full article here and meet other creative workers in Portland, USA : https://www.pdxmonthly.com/arts-and-culture/2015/08/meet-the-people-who-make-the-portland-art-world-possible