8 minute read
Illuminating Egypt's Past, One Luminaire at a Time
from Oct/Nov 2025
By Randy Reid
The one-billion-dollar Grand Egyptian Museum is not merely the world’s largest museum dedicated to one civilization. It is a symbol of light in layers.
Covering nearly 500,000 m² of floor area and showcasing more than 100,000 artifacts, including the complete Tutankhamun collection, it was designed for both scale and sustainability.
Leading up to the Grand Opening, information has been scarce. Press kits are nonexistent, and the original glimpses came from a brief video clip provided by Lighting Services Inc.
Kathy Abernathy, Principal of Abernathy Lighting Design, an Eos Lightmedia Studio, and Jason Rainone, Senior Lighting Designer have been kept in the dark. Jason recalled that even he discovered the museum’s soft opening almost by accident. “I was at IALD’s Enlighten Americas conference in San Diego when Ken Kane of Lighting Services Inc leaned over, showed me his phone and said, ‘Hey, did you know GEM opened?’”
That exchange set the tone for our conversation. This would not be a technical review, but a personal journey through light—crafted, negotiated, and executed over years, across continents, and in countless design meetings.
Three Bills of Quantities, One Cohesive Strategy
Early in design, the team organized the project into three Bills of Quantities.
The exhibit lighting package covered everything integrated into cases and reader-rail structures. A second package addressed the suspended lighting structures— large overhead “light boxes” positioned above key platforms. The third detailed the in-field lighting using high-level track throughout the expansive galleries.
This framework gave the designers a way to manage a vast, interconnected building while keeping each toolset optimized for its role.
The Suspended Structures: Architectural Lighting Elevated
The sheer size of the galleries demanded punctuation. Exhibit designers Haley Sharpe Design, in partnership with Cultural Innovations, proposed large fabric-clad translucent volumes suspended over major platforms.
Kathy and Jason devised ways to light these volumes so they would internally glow, accentuate key displays, and avoid blocking platform illumination.
Jason’s solution was a series of light boxes, each built with three integrated systems. Along the underside, mini recessed downlights from Luminii delivered tight, controllable beams onto artifacts. The vertical faces came alive with color-changing linear grazers from Lumenpulse, mounted at the top and bottom edges to internally backlight the translucent double-sided panels. Concealed around the upper edge, a low-voltage miniature track system from Luminii ensured light reached the center of the platforms, areas otherwise shadowed by the box itself.
“It was one of the most collaborative parts of the design,” Jason recalled. “We had to balance architecture, lighting, and conservation within a single suspended structure. Every element was designed to do its part without distracting from the story the objects needed to tell.”
Hidden Gems: Illumination in the Plinths
Fixtures from Precision by Luminii, measuring about the size of a chess piece, are hidden beneath 30-inch-high plinths and tucked behind reader rails, invisible to the casual visitor. The light rises softly to reveal artifacts without intruding on the viewing experience.
“The reader rail sits in front of you,” Jason said. “We worked out the angle and depth, so the fixtures are hidden from sight when you’re standing there looking at the object.”
This interplay, where the light source is concealed so the object shines unencumbered, is one of the project’s quiet triumphs. Together with the high-level Lighting Services Inc track system, these discreet fixtures became the project’s workhorses.
“With the collaborative integration of lighting into exhibit structures, creating alcoves to hide light sources, very small objects did not need to be lit from 20 feet in the air,” Kathy explained. By blending the two systems, the team was able to cover 95 to 99 percent of the display scenarios, no matter how the tens of thousands of artifacts might be arranged.
Exhibit and Case Lighting: Protecting the Past
Jason described how Luxam handled the display cases. “They’ve been on site for a very long time, and as far as I know, they’re in every single case in the project.”
Two distinct systems were specified. For durable objects— stone carvings, metal pieces, and items resistant to degradation—Luxam integrated a low-voltage LED track system into the case structures.
For fragile artifacts, especially the mummies, fiber optics were essential.
“Anything degradable is lit with fiber optics,” Jason said. “The fiber filters out most UV, so the light reaching the object is as minimally damaging as possible.” The design also kept illuminators outside the cases. “If anything shorts or overheats, there’s no risk of smoke or fire inside the enclosure.”
Some mummy cases took preservation further, employing nitrogen-rich, positive-pressure environments. “It’s not ordinary air inside those enclosures,” Jason noted. “It’s a special nitrogen mix that helps keep the mummies from degrading. That meant we had to be very careful to not add anything extra that might compromise the environment.”
For these pieces, preservation clearly outweighed lighting. As Jason put it, “The priority was never in doubt: preservation came first. Climate safeguarded the artifacts, and lighting was designed to support that goal.”
Natural Light as a Scripted Partner
Daylight was an equally intentional part of the museum’s design. Heneghan Peng Architects aligned the building’s visual axes with the Pyramids, modulating natural light with folded roofs and expansive glazing.
Jason described the orientation vividly, saying “If you were to look at the museum from overhead, it’s shaped like a giant wedge. There’s a central point about fifteen kilometers away, and from there all the lines radiate directly toward the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.”
As visitors ascend through the main galleries, the orientation reveals itself. “Eventually you come to a set of windows,” Jason said, “and from there, you’re looking straight out over the plains of Giza, with the Great Pyramids framed in view. It’s unforgettable.”
The building uses daylight as both backdrop and narrative device. At the atrium, the colossal Ramses II statue is bathed in natural sun. Extensive onsite confirmation of early architectural daylight modeling informed both exhibit design and placement choices along with lighting equipment specifications throughout the Phase 2 gallery spaces.
The Human Story: Collaboration, Time, and Scale
From early 2019 to final revision in July 2020, the design process spanned about 18 months. But the building itself had been under construction since 2005 and was only completed in 2023, with a full public opening now scheduled for November 2025.
What stood out in our conversation was not only the technical precision of the luminaires is of the highest quality, as is their placement: hidden in plinths, folded into translucent boxes, integrated into nitrogen-sealed cases, merged with projection. Always serving the objects and their stories.
In its galleries, light is used with precision and restraint, bringing ancient artifacts forward without overwhelming them. Whether through daylight, fiber optics, or carefully placed downlights, GEM’s lighting strategy reflects both respect for heritage and mastery of the craft.
Epilogue: A Lightness of Being
GEM’s galleries, plinths, digital streams, and suspended structures are illuminated not only by technology, but also by the vision and collaboration of designers like Kathy and Jason.
They did not simply light a museum. They created a dialogue—between Egypt’s past and our present. Between shadow and revelation. Between conservation and spectacle.
It is a conversation that will unfold for decades, radiating outward, much like the museum itself, toward a future defined in light.
