Tom Postma Design Conceives of Galleries as Movements in a Symphony for This Ludwig van Beethoven Exhibition in Vienna

2021 Best of Year winner for Exhibition

In this Ludwig van Beethoven exhibition designed by Tom Postma Design, mounted at the palatial 19th-century museum last year, the great composer’s portrait appeared nowhere. But visitors could stick their head into a John Baldessari ear-trumpet sculpture in the stairwell and listen to his string quartets. With the show, the Amsterdam studio, which has made a name for itself designing the exhibition plans for such art fairs as TEFAF and Art Basel, crosses mediums and eras to connect music with other art forms. Conceived as movements in a symphony, the four traditional galleries it occupied were totally transformed. Like the composer, “Our aim was for the exhibit to be radical yet poetic,” design director Dani Mileo says. In the first room, keyboard sonatas played, layers of white fabric draped overhead, and all was serene—that is, until Rebecca Horn’s suspended upside-down piano spewed discordant sounds, a surrogate for Beethoven’s temper. Evoking his loss of hearing, the next room was silent and somber, with thick carpet to dampen footsteps and walls clad in fiber-cement panels, while the third room’s blue stretched-fabric walls, mirror-finished floor, and J.M.W. Turner watercolor sketches explored his relationship with nature. To separate the spaces acoustically, Tom Postma Design worked with Platform 78 to devise tunnelike portals lined with sound-absorbing pyramid foam, which functioned as auditory palate cleansers between galleries.

Tom Postma Design: Dani Mileo; Joris Nielander; Roel Smit; Sharon Van Wezel; Rachid Abu Hassan