Demonstration of LED Retrofit Lamps at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Page: 27 of 54
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3.1 Color Issues
The color spectrum of LED lamps varies slightly from that of incandescent lighting. Unlike
incandescent, LED lamps allow designers to select from a variety of SPDs with different color attributes.
Even small spectral differences, such as those that occur when the correlated color temperature (CCT) of
the lamp is changed from 2700K to 3000K, slightly increase the proportion of short wavelength energy,
making blue tones, such as painted blue skies, more vivid. In early LED gallery trials, the higher CCT
lamps with their slight color rendering differences gave the impression that the painting colors were more
richly saturated (i.e., more colorful), and this was initially embraced by the design staff. However, the
curatorial staff along with the museum director felt that the light of the 3000K Solais PAR30 lamps
rendered the paintings too colorful (overly saturated) and found the comparatively cool light distracting;
they preferred 2700K LED lamps because the light from these lamps matched the early 20th Century light
under which the early modernist work was created. Consequently, it was decided that amber theatrical
filters (Rosco 3443) would be used to filter out some of the extra blue energy so that the LED light
closely matched the halogen lighting used in adjacent galleries. Figure 7 shows a photograph of the final
gallery installation, including the filtered LED lamping.Nt
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Figure 7. Early Modernism Gallery relighted entirely with LED replacement lamps.
the Smithsonian American Art Museum.Photo courtesy of
The demonstration clearly showed very early on that color metrics such as CCT and color rendering
index are a guideline for selecting sample lamps, but that no metrics can adequately communicate what
the trained eye sees. There is no substitute for mockups in the actual space, lighting specific artwork, for
making these color judgments.13
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Miller, Naomi J. & Rosenfeld, Scott M. Demonstration of LED Retrofit Lamps at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, report, June 22, 2012; Richland, Washington. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc828649/m1/27/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.