Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You was presented at the Art Institute of Chicago (September 19, 2021–January 24, 2022) as a museum- and city-scale project co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, and MoMA. Rather than remaining contained within a single gallery, the exhibition extended across the museum’s special exhibition space, the Michigan Avenue–facing windows, and the floor of Griffin Court, while also projecting outward into Chicago via formats such as buses and billboards—treating architecture and public circulation as part of the work’s address.

From a lighting perspective, the challenge was to support an immersive, high-contrast graphic environment with clarity and control—preserving legibility across large vinyl fields while avoiding glare, reflections, and veiling brightness. A key technical constraint was the museum’s existing infrastructure: galleries relied on track lighting and did not have continuous linear luminaires, yet the artist’s intent called for a distinctly linear lighting language. In response, the lighting design required a custom fixture family engineered to use the museum’s existing track system while enabling continuous linear runs both along the track axis and perpendicular to it—maintaining uninterrupted lines of light without reworking ceilings or power distribution. Those custom fixtures integrated Bluetooth-controllable drivers, allowing dimming and fine tuning of exhibition levels without altering the museum’s electrical installation—critical for fast installation, curatorial flexibility, and ongoing adjustments over the run of the show.

Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Client: The Art Institute of Chicago
Exhibition Design: Leticia Pardo
Photography: Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago