Dead Flat® on Display: Blind Date at Nordico Stadtmuseum

Hague Blue No.30 at Blind Date | Photo: Norbert Artner

Over the years, we’ve decorated the walls of art exhibitions all over the world. But today, we’re visiting one that’s a little different – Blind Date: Appointment with a Collection at the Nordico Stadtmuseum, the city museum of Linz in Upper Austria.

Here you’ll meet pieces you’ve never seen before and know very little about. Investigating why we prioritise some pieces of art and leave others gathering dust, this exhibition gives every piece equal value and an equal opportunity to find love, all displayed against a vibrant backdrop of Farrow & Ball shades in ultra-matt Dead Flat®.

Charlottes Lock's No.268 at Blind Date | Photo: Norbert Artner

Vardo No.288 at Blind Date | Photo: Norbert Artner

For museum head Andrea Bina and exhibition designer Silvia Merlo, our palette was the natural choice to bring their experimental concept to life.

"Visiting the Blind Date exhibition should be a sensual experience, and Farrow & Ball colours have achieved this in a wonderful way,” they said.

“The special depth of colour, the luminosity, and the liaison with light set the exhibits magnificently in scene. The visitors are thus offered unusual visual experiences and the joy of discovery is ignited."

Unlike most exhibitions, the 120,000 strong collection of artefacts featured in Blind Date isn’t restricted by an overarching theme.

The items up for discovery are both small and large, old and new, made of costly materials and inexpensive ones, and range from extraordinary artistic feats to the simplest of everyday objects.

What unites them is a dedication to celebrating and preserving history, and the poignancy of once-loved objects being given their time in the sun again.

This is precisely the spirit of Nordico as an institution. Still bearing the name of its centuries-old legacy as a former Jesuit school called Collegium Nordicum, when it was run as a boarding school for students from Scandinavia, it’s been dedicated to preserving the people’s history of Linz since opening as a museum in 1973.