INTRODUCTION
At the new National Geographic Museum of Exploration in Washington, D.C., storytelling is designed to surround you.
The museum’s inaugural South Gallery exhibition, Photo Ark: Animals of Earth, brings the National Geographic Photo Ark’s signature photography into an immersive environment shaped by projection, 4K displays, lighting, and sound. Featuring the work of renowned National Geographic Explorer, photographer, and Photo Ark founder Joel Sartore, the exhibition is part of a multiyear effort to photograph species around the world and inspire conservation.
Created in collaboration with Moment Factory, the exhibit transforms powerful animal portraiture into a large-scale visual experience. Videlio-HMS was selected to deliver the full audiovisual execution, including engineering, fabrication, installation, integration, programming, and commissioning.
THE CHALLENGE
An immersive museum exhibit depends on technology that performs quietly and consistently behind the scenes.
For Photo Ark: Animals of Earth, Pixera media servers powered 30 Panasonic projectors and a suite of LG 4K UHD displays, transforming the South Gallery into a dynamic visual environment across walls and floors. With lighting, audio, projection, and display systems all working together, the AV infrastructure needed to support reliable 4K signal distribution while keeping loud equipment away from the visitor-facing museum space.
Flexibility was also essential. Following its debut, the exhibition is expected to travel to partner museums worldwide, requiring a system that could support different layout variations and future installation environments.
THE SOLUTION
Videlio-HMS deployed PureLink HOF III fiber extenders to provide compact, robust video distribution over fiber. The HOF III allowed 4K HDMI signals to be extended from remote technical areas to the exhibit, helping keep noisy equipment outside the museum space while maintaining the signal transport needed for a projection and display-driven environment.
By reducing the amount of fiber needed to transmit 4K content, the system helped reduce cost and complexity while allowing for more redundancy in multi-fiber runs — an important advantage for an exhibit designed to travel.
Videlio-HMS also paired the HOF III extenders with PureLink’s SX2-8800 8x8 HDMI matrix switchers to support local confidence monitoring. Using the HOF III’s HDMI loop output, the team could bring exhibit video feeds into one centralized monitoring location to view and verify feeds from one place.
THE RESULT
With PureLink technology integrated into the system, Videlio-HMS delivered an AV infrastructure designed to support high-impact visual storytelling while keeping the technology behind the experience as unobtrusive as possible.
The HOF III fiber extenders helped enable 4K video distribution from a remote, sound-dampened space, while the SX2-8800 matrix switchers supported centralized confidence monitoring for the exhibit’s video feeds.
Videlio-HMS completed installation and configuration ahead of Moment Factory’s on-site production phase, creating a prepared environment for final creative integration. According to Videlio-HMS, Moment Factory reported that Photo Ark: Animals of Earth was “one of the most prepared sites they walked into” and praised Videlio-HMS for its attitude and professionalism.
THE REVIEW
“PureLink helped us keep the technology behind the experience. The HOF III fiber extenders allowed us to move loud equipment into a remote, conditioned space while still supporting the 4K video distribution the exhibit required. That helped reduce ambient noise in the museum and gave us the flexibility needed for a traveling show.
Paired with the SX2-8800, the HOF III’s loop output also gave us one central place to monitor all of the exhibit’s video feeds. For a system of this scale, that visibility was incredibly valuable.” – Ben Steiner, AV Systems Engineer at Videlio-HMS
