The exhibit that closes still exists.
Documentation of exhibits, galleries and collections in place — for archive, for remote access, and for installation records that outlive the show.
Three reasons institutions do this
Archive. A temporary exhibit exists for a few months and then does not. A walkthrough is the only record of what the installation actually looked like.
Access. Visitors who cannot travel, cannot attend, or need the space in advance for accessibility reasons.
Installation records. Measured geometry for the next install, the touring version, or the insurance file.
What we capture
- Full gallery walkthrough with measured floor plan
- Exhibit layout and case positions in context
- Point cloud for irregular or large-volume spaces
- Detail photography of individual works or displays
- Building documentation for facilities and capital planning
From $2,500. Grant-funded projects: we can supply scope and quote language for the application.
Can you work around opening hours?
Yes, and before opening is usually better — no visitors in frame and a cleaner capture.
Conservation constraints?
The capture is non-contact and light-sensitive material is a scope conversation, not a blocker. Tell us the constraints.
Can this be grant funded?
Often. Send the program requirements and we will tell you honestly whether we can meet them.
The exhibit is temporary. The record does not have to be.
A special exhibition exists for three or four months and is then dismantled permanently. What survives is a checklist, some installation photographs taken on opening day, and whatever the registrar wrote down. If the show travels, the receiving institution rebuilds it from that — which is why traveling exhibitions so often look different at the second venue than at the first.
A measured capture of the installed show gives the next venue the actual thing: case positions and dimensions, sightlines, wall text placement, lighting positions, the spacing decisions somebody agonized over. It takes about thirty minutes per 2,500 ft² and it is the difference between reinstalling a show and reinventing it.
Four uses, one capture
- Traveling exhibition documentation — the installed condition handed to the next venue as measured drawings plus a walkthrough.
- Condition and insurance records — dated documentation of cases, mounts and gallery condition, which matters when a claim is made about damage in transit or installation.
- Grant reporting and public access — funders increasingly want evidence of reach, and a walkthrough that outlives the show is a genuine deliverable rather than a photograph of one.
- Collections storage measurement — the least glamorous and often the most useful: measured plans of storage areas for capacity planning, rehousing projects and move management.
Working around objects
Capture is entirely non-contact. Nothing is touched, moved, or handled. The tripod stays outside any barrier at the distance your registrar specifies. There is no flash and no supplementary lighting — capture works in the gallery's own light, which means light-sensitive material is exposed to nothing it is not already exposed to during opening hours. If your conservator has a lux or exposure-duration condition, tell us at scoping and we schedule to it.
Accessibility as a real deliverable
A walkthrough of a gallery is one of the few genuinely useful accessibility measures a museum can implement quickly. Somebody who cannot travel to the building, cannot navigate the stair, or cannot stand for an hour can move through the space at their own pace. It is not a substitute for physical access and should not be sold as one, but it is a real extension of reach, and it is grant-legible.
Can you capture during install, before the public sees it?
Yes, and that is usually the right moment — the show is complete, the gallery is empty, and nobody has to be worked around. A few hours before opening is ideal.
What does a gallery cost?
A single 4,000 ft² gallery with a measured plan and walkthrough is around $3,400. A whole building including storage and back of house is typically $10,000–$25,000. Institutional and grant-funded schedules are workable — tell us the funding calendar at scoping.
Who owns the resulting files?
You do, outright, with no hosting subscription attached. For an institution whose entire purpose is permanent stewardship, renting your own documentation from a platform is the wrong arrangement. More on that here.
What we actually deliver here
The services this work is usually scoped as: architectural photography, as-built drawings and point cloud scanning. Everything comes off one capture of the building, and all of it is priced publicly — you can price your own project without talking to us first.
Related: historic preservation.