How 88 DMG DASH™ Lights Turned Versailles From Day To Night At The MET

In 2022, The Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced an exhibition entitled In America: An Anthology of Fashion that explored fashion in the United States spanning from the eighteenth century to the present. As a part of the installation, American Fashion Designer and Film Director Tom Ford staged “The Battle of Versailles” as an iconic fashion event-turned-exhibit during the 2022 Met Gala inside the 360° Vanderlyn Panorama room, which houses John Vanderlyn’s Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. Knowing this painting would be the backdrop for this bold new exhibit – not to mention all of the Met Gala paparazzi photos – a new approach for lighting the famous painting was conceived that used Rosco DMG DASH fixtures to bring the painting and the exhibit to life.

The 200+ year-old painting inside the Vanderlyn Panorama room is 12’ H x 165’ W (3.6 x 49.5m) and is positioned to wrap around the room to provide a 360° view. Ford’s design incorporated the painting into a dynamic scene with mannequins positioned in a battle-like formation on a black Plexi-glass platform with a mirror above them in the center of the room. In the earliest design meetings for the installation, it was known that the painting would be a huge element that needed to be part of the scene – especially since it would be in every photo.

Ford wanted to create a nighttime look for the painting to add to the dramatic vibe of the scene. The existing lighting in the room was too generic with no color-changing capabilities and only positioned in the cove above the painting. The experiential creative agency CS Global Group was hired to curate the specific lighting required to illuminate Ford’s design and light the painting to create gradients of color from the top and the bottom.

The design team at CS Global needed a color-mixing LED fixture that could be controlled wirelessly and would not only fit inside the six-inch (15cm) lighting coves but would also meet the budgetary requirements of the project. Rosco’s Marttise Hill arrived on site to introduce the designers to the Rosco DMG DASH as a potential solution. This ultra-compact pocket light features Rosco’s six-chip MIX^® technology (Red, Green, Blue, Lime, Amber & 4000K White) and it can be controlled via wireless DMX.

DMG DASH units can be seen inside the top & bottom coves lighting the painting.

Lighting Designer, Renée Molina and the CS Lighting team were "initially impressed by the DASH for its light quality, color output, brightness, and compact form factor,” however, there was a concern about the wireless DMX connectivity in the room. They conducted a radio scan of the room to check frequencies and confirmed that the wireless DMX signals would not be interfered with.

Once the design team was satisfied that the DMG DASH was the right fixture for the job, they determined that the installation would require 88 fixtures – 44 units for the top and 44 units for the bottom – to illuminate the panoramic artwork every day for five months.

The Vanderlyn Panorama room has an upper cove in the ceiling that is used to light the painting from the top, however, a concentric bottom cove was built to light it from the bottom. The DMG DASH units were attached to CAMVATE 1/4"-20 Ball Head Pedestal Mounts, which kept the fixtures compact enough to fit inside the coves and enabled the designers to easily focus the lights onto the painting. The fixtures, which are powered by USB-C cables, were plugged into the existing power inside the top coves, while USB-C power runs were installed inside the bottom cove.

Once all 88 DMG DASH fixtures were installed, Renée and her team used an ETCnomad system to set the 44 top lights to a rich dark blue to create a vivid night sky, and the 44 bottom DASH lights to 2700K to create a warm uplight for the palace. The design team also attached the flat diffuser panels that came with the fixtures, as well as DMG DASH Barn Door Accessories for beam control, which enabled them to shape the light for even coverage of the painting.

During the five-month installation, Renée noted that “the DMG DASH units worked great, and the director (Ford) and The MET were both pleased with the result.” She also explained that the 44 top DASH units are still in place to light the panoramic painting to this day.

The next time you’re in New York City, make sure you include a visit to The MET to behold John Vanderlyn’s Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles in person. If you’re interested in exploring more of CS Global’s work, you can visit their website: csglobalgroup.com. To learn more about DMG DASH and explore if it’s the right LED fixture for your next project, visit the DMG DASH product page.