Tinker imagineers led a talented team to celebrate the life of innovative painter James Ensor at a prestigious museum in Belgium. Paul Milligan finds out how they did it.
Trying to get inside the head of an avant-garde artist who touched on surrealist and expressionist themes may not be the easiest thing to do, but it held no fears for a team of companies led by Dutch experience design and production agency Tinker imagineers. Newly renovated at the start of 2024, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (known as KMSKA - Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen) in Belgium decided to mark the 75th anniversary of James Ensor’s death with an exhibition (running from Sept 2024-January 2025) celebrating his life and career.
For those who aren’t familiar with Ensor’s work, he has been dubbed Belgium’s master of darkness and specialised in dark, surreal and sometimes grotesque satirical paintings. He is widely regarded as an innovator in 19th century art and is best known for his use of carnival masks. Ensor came from a theatrical family and he used masks to explore the darker side of society.
When the Royal Museum Of Fine Arts Antwerp reopened in 2022 after an 11-year restoration, it was perhaps no surprise that an exploration of one of Belgium’s most famous artists would be on the schedule. Tinker was awarded the design and installation contract for ‘In Your Wildest Dreams, Ensor Beyond Impressionism’ through a tender process. As it has in previous projects such as the CERN Science Gateway, Tinker was to manage all aspects of the project, including hiring specialised subcontractors for lighting, AV, and interactive elements. The project was to include lighting design and AV hardware from 50lux, interactives by Kiss The Frog and a Peppers Ghost exhibit by Dutch Igloo amongst others.
What was the original client brief for the project? “It was to create a spectacular, flagship exhibition as the grand finale to the ‘Year of Ensor’. The client wanted to highlight his eccentricity and innovation while creating an engaging experience for diverse audiences,” says Leonie Janssen, spatial designer, Tinker. The exhibition covers Ensor’s artistic career and is a chronological story of his work spread across 13 rooms, with each room representing a different artistic chapter in his life. “We changed the doors of the 13 rooms to black tunnels so you end up in a new world at the other end, it's not like going through a normal door, it’s a new chapter,” says Janssen. Within the walls of the KMSKA is the Ensor Research Project, one of the leading centres of information on the artist and home to 39 of his paintings and more than 600 drawings.
The KMSKA had a clear visionThe regarding which of Ensor’s works deserved special emphasis. “These decisions were driven by their artistic and historical significance,” explains Janssen. Once the content was chosen, how did Tinker decide where it was most appropriate to use technology to best bring Ensor’s work to life? “Most of the time when we choose AV we do so because there are more possibilities than if you just use analogue. AV gives us the opportunity to do things with atmosphere, for example Ensor was a lovely writer, so there are a lot of quotes of him in every room that show his way of thinking. Those quotes are in different languages, it's much nicer to use a projection rather than write the same phrase on a wall three times. At times we use AV because it’s practical, at other times it’s because AV is more beautiful,” explains Janssen.
Each of the 13 rooms features AV components to varying degrees, with hands-on analogue and interactive installations for visitors, supported by AV. What visitors to this exhibition will find is that even things that may look like standard AV tech we are all used to, here they have added or extra meaning. The idea for the first room that visitors enter is to provide an introduction and set up the rest the museum. To do this a short movie is played using a 5K ViewSonic UST projector onto a large screen, which has been made to resemble a theatre stage with big stage curtains either side, and masks around the top of the ‘stage’ as decoration. It’s been designed so it looks as though the curator (Herwig Todts) is standing on the stage in front of you. Audac amps and speakers provide the sound, and a BrightSign media player controls the content.
Tinker wanted to make the exhibition entrance special, so visitors walk into a giant archway in the shape of Ensor’s head, through some curtains. It’s an indicator of the creative use of set design visitors will find throughout all 13 rooms. “The entrance is already very iconic; you literally walk through his head. Whatever age group you are, that’s a cool way to enter an exhibition. Through the curtains and you dive into the head of Ensor and see his wildest dreams. We asked the curator to be the host of the movie, because the exhibition has lots of theatrical elements we made the video look like a Wes Anderson movie, on one side it's fun to look at and full of nice tricks, but it’s also serious, still in a fun way, because we have the curator telling you how to approach the exhibition,” says Janssen.
The next rooms is called Thee Triumph of Light & Colours and explores realism. One of them, holding up a 43-in interactive touchscreen (installed vertically) with a PC housed in a box below. Jeffrey Steenbergen, system integrator and light designer from 50lux (the company takes its name from the light level used for high value art) describes how they were constructed. “They are real wooden easels we painted black. At the back we added an extra layer of wood so you can't see the back of the screen.” Molenaar takes up the story; “The easels all look towards the wall which features a number of paintings. What you can do in several steps is unravel what's behind them.” There are three ways to find out more, a slider gives the visitor the ability to look under a layer of the painting using UV light/ X-ray scanning. Then touchpoints appear on the newly discovered layer. Visitors can zoom in to paintings to reveal more information, and finally they can watch videos from a restorer (a genuine Ensor expert called Annelies) who explains her research.
Opposite the easels is a statue of Hercules, so far so traditional museum you may think. In terms of AV, there’s a projection of chicken meat on Hercules’ body (provided by two small BenQ UST projectors), inspired by a quote from Ensor projected on the floor. Visitors are invited to draw on a sketchpad, “Because Ensor was always doodling on all the Roman pictures he was given in school, so you can do it yourself as well,” adds Steenbergen.
The next few rooms explore the theme Deductive Infernal Scenes, here visitors can zoom in on the Temptation of St. Anthony painting in two ways, by using 22-in iiyama interactive displays built into the wall or using hands-on A3 boards with details of the art in question. Just before visitors reach the last element of the exhibition, in My Favorite Room they will find a vintage slide projector (Ensor loved this early technology) and hidden inside a beach cart is a Pepper’s Ghost film created by specialist company Dutch Igloo. It shows six different scenes of Ensor at work in his own favourite room, and you can watch him play piano etc. “We decided on Peppers Ghost because it’s far more magical than just a screen,” says Janssen.
After this, visitors enter the central hall, offering views of both the entrance and exit. In this adjacent area, where you can observe Ensor’s profile on either side, you’ll find a closure exhibit—a Photo Booth inviting visitors to unmask themselves. Entering through Ensor’s youthful head and exiting through his older head creates a reflective journey through the exhibition. Called Unmask Yourself and designed by Kiss the Frog, visitors put on a virtual mask inside the photo booth by looking at a camera just above the screen inside the booth. Molenaar describes how it works: “When you sit down you’ve got a live view of your face, and it tells you where to put your left eye, right eye, nose etc so you can ‘dress up’ your face.” The clever part is that the camera tracks the movement of the face, so if you open your mouth, you see the masked image open its mouth as well. Visitors can also save the result to their phones via a QR code or print out a paper copy of the picture.
What were the biggest challenges in putting such a detailed exhibition on? “The most difficult part was getting power everywhere,” says Steenbergen. “Because the lines
that you have to make are quite big, in most cases things are going underneath carpets. You’re working with main voltage so you have to make sure that you can also grout everything that people touch. Some of the rooms just didn’t have the technical infrastructure for us to always be able to do that all the time. That makes it a lot of work because everything has to be run from above, you don’t want to run five separate cables underneath that floor, it has to be just one that you then reconnect again from box to box. But you can only do that when the carpet is there and the easels are there, but then they are also in the way to get the cable underneath again. The biggest challenge was putting it all away as neatly as possible.”
Despite the challenges of working on a project with short turnaround times, and infrastructure that doesn’t easily lend itself to technology, the team lead by Tinker has
to take great pride on such a sensitive end result, with so much attention to detail. It’s even more incredible when you realise after a four month run the exhibition will be replaced by a new exhibit, such is the nature of museum life. This was taken into consideration as the hardware used for the exhibition has been carefully considered to balance sustainability, costeffectiveness, and future reusability. A significant portion of the equipment involves the reuse of existing museum hardware, such as screens and NUCs from the previous exhibition (Turning Heads) and projectors provided by the museum for the quotes on the walls. Additionally, some of the hardware was hired to optimise costs and minimise waste.
However, at the request of KMSKA, certain rented items were purchased to allow for their reuse in future temporary exhibitions. The entire team has taken dark and complex themes at times (there are lighter pieces too), and managed to satisfy and enthral lifelong art lovers, casual observers and children alike. That’s a difficult task to complete when the subject matter is a lot more mainstream than it is here.
Final word goes to Janssen: “The interactives were carefully designed to complement Ensor’s artistry, his paintings and ideas served as the foundation of our design. Our main clients are usually museums on a certain topic, not about art most of the time. With a topic you have to make it interesting from kids to hardcore fans. Art is the same. We always have to see how we can make it interesting for all types of audiences."
KIT LIST
Audac EPA152 amplifier, ATEO6DM/B loudspeaker
BenQ LU951 5200 lumens laser projector
Brightsign HD225 media players
Iiyama 22-in ProLite TF2234MCB7AGB, 43-in ProLite TF4339MSCB1AG displays
Logitech Brio camera
Viewsonic LS832WU 5,000 lumens laser projector
