Minimalist Gallery Print Installation

Some time ago I had a show of my Tarot images hanging in the Calumet Photo Los Angeles store—22, 16×20 prints were displayed in a separate gallery room, in the back of the store.

 

Lee Varis with Prints

The prints from the show were mounted directly to the walls.

This was not a traditional gallery show; Calumet could act as an agent to sell prints and the cost of producing the show was all on me. With little opportunity to make money from the sale of prints, I was more interested in keeping costs down so I really needed to find an inexpensive solution for displaying the prints. Most of the cost of a gallery show is in the framing and hanging of prints!

My solution was to mount the prints directly to the walls with Magnetacks! These are a very cool kind of magnetic push-pin system that allows for attaching the prints without putting holes in them.

Tarot Print

The prints are hung with Magnetacks, which are small magnetic dots that hold the print to a magnetic thumbtack.

The system sandwiches the print between a magnetic dot and the head of a thumb tack.

Magnetack 1

The complete magnetack.

Magnetack 2

The thumb tack portion pushed into the wall.

Magnetack 3

A powerful magnet end piece locks onto the thumb tack.

Magnetack 4

The magnet holds the print without damage.

Magnetack 5

An attractive minimalist solution.

Hanging prints in this way is very easy. The print can be leveled just by pulling and pushing into position because only the friction of the magnets are holding the print—it is infinitely adjustable! The cost of the tack system is quite reasonable as well. 48 Magnetacks, enough to hang all 22 prints, cost $50, or less than the cost of one frame!

You can buy Magnetacks from their website: http://www.themagnetack.com