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Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road | The British Museum, London

An award-winning lighting consultancy approach to temporary exhibition lighting design at the British Museum, using light to amplify Hiroshige’s lyrical journey through Edo Japan. Carefully controlled illumination supported conservation while enhancing the exhibition’s narrative, atmosphere and visitor experience.

  • Temporary exhibition lighting design by an award-winning lighting consultancy Michael Grubb Studio, at the British Museum in London supporting Hiroshige's Japanese woodblock prints and an immersive visitor experience.

Lighting the Exhibition Narrative Through Hiroshige’s Journey and Changing Perspectives

Michael Grubb Studio collaborated with the exhibitions team at the British Museum on Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, a major exhibition celebrating the iconic 19th-century Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige. Best known for atmospheric woodblock prints depicting travel, nature and changing weather, Hiroshige’s work invites slow looking and reflection. Running from 1 May to 1 September 2025, the exhibition was the first to explore his full career in more than 25 years.

As an independent lighting design practice, we approached illuminating the gallery as a journey, echoing Hiroshige’s own interest in movement and changing perspectives. More than 90 works were presented across three main sections, tracing his development from early bijin-ga prints and book illustrations through to his most celebrated landscape series, including The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Our temporary exhibition lighting design responded closely to this narrative, creating a quiet, immersive environment that supported the curatorial aim of offering visitors a moment of stillness and escape from the pace of modern life. Soft, focused beams echoed the delicacy and restraint of the prints while preserving their fine detail and subtle colour gradients. Light levels remained low throughout in line with conservation requirements for works on paper, with additional controls for particularly light-sensitive objects.

  • London exhibition lighting consultancy creating a quiet, immersive visitor environment for a major presentation of Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige at the British Museum
  • Museum exhibition lighting by Michael Grubb Studio for Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, using soft focused illumination to enhance artworks and visitor interpretation.
  • Visitor experience lighting design by an international lighting design consultancy for a major Japanese art exhibition in London, supporting slow looking, reflection and narrative movement through the gallery.

Shaping Atmosphere and Focus Through Artwork-Led Exhibition Lighting

A gentle blue wash along the gallery’s curved wall referenced Hiroshige’s distinctive use of Prussian blue skies while supporting the printed landscape banners suspended above. This ambient layer extended the landscape motifs beyond the frame, subtly immersing visitors in the natural world depicted within the artworks.

Low-level, warm-white linear LEDs integrated into the gallery furniture provided a consistent ambient base. The lighting enhanced the deep tone of the cherry wood used across the setworks, bringing warmth and tactility to the space without competing with the artworks.

Throughout the exhibition, the lighting remained deliberately understated. Our award-winning lighting design team used light to shape a calm, reflective atmosphere in which visitors could focus on the journey and the changing light and mood within Hiroshige’s prints. This considered approach to temporary exhibition lighting design reflects the artist’s sensitivity to season, space and time, allowing the works to remain the focus.

Client

The British Museum

Lead Designer

British Museum Exhibitions Team

Photographer

The Trustees of the British Museum

Location

London, United Kingdom

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