Jaś Elsner and Stefanie Lenk are blogging from behind the scenes during the installation of the Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition Imagining the Divine: Art and the Rise of World Religions, opening on October 19th. 

Jaś Elsner, 11/10/17, installation day 8

And then there was light…

Simon, the lighting man, is coming. Actually, he is stuck in traffic on the A34. But this is a way of saying the same thing. We get on with other things…

Simon arrives. This is a kind of transformative moment – dark spaces, objects in the shadow, Things you could hardly see are going to have their chance. Simon is the magician.

Take the bland lighting of our wonderful Good Shepherd, found in Iraq and now usually to be found carrying his ram in the stores of the British Museum, when he was first set up, on a plinth with the plastic not yet unwrapped.

Then look at him caressed by Simon’s light, even if the label behind to the left has not yet been finally placed. It’s great to see the textures of our objects coming to life…

Light is magic.