apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

3 of our walls are brick and we have a ton of art. We use brick clips to hang them. (www.brickclips.com)
We've never had a problem and for larger pieces we just use two clips and then use picture wire on the piece of art.
Hope this helps!

Encase the art work in Plexiglas, and have it floor standing like an encased sculpture.

Jenn.

would binder clips 'crush' the frame? there are a lot of different styles available. I dont know how you could then hang them but at least that would take care of the mechanism aspect. Maybe a cable system strung from the side walls?

Is a picture rail incorporated in the molding?
I once hung an old leaded glass church window from the picture rail using regular old picture wire. Worked great.

Get a brick drill bit. Then get some brick anchors - we used plastic, but apparently there are lead ones too that are stronger. These tap into the hole you just made with the drill bit (make sure the size of the bit is the same as the size of the anchor). Then screw in a hook.

Martha has a pretty good tutorial:

http://www.marthastewart.com/hardware-for-hanging-objects-on-solid-surfaces

oh wait... that's four pieces lying on the floor. not what I saw originally... optical illusion I guess.

Can you mount them on a solid square? Maybe even glass - or plexiglass - then mount rings to the glass and hang it with wire

Website is wrong renee. http://brickclip.com, no "s"! :) Thanks for the tip, I just moved into a house with brick as well!

animalhouze - oops! thanks for the fix.

Don't drill the brick, if you can avoid it. It can't just be filled in with spackle later.

Drill a hole through into the mortar bewteen the bricks. That way you're not damaging the actual bricks, and the hole can be easily and indistinguishably filled in down the road.

Don't drill. At your local home improvement store they should sell some clips that fit between the bricks in the mortar space. They use tension between the top brick and the bottom one to hold in place. No drilling required and they are easy to move. I use them all over my apartment. I got mine from Lowes

Depending on how heavy the art is - you could try those 3M adhesive hooks. We used them to hang things on a cement wall - I'm sure it would work just as well on brick...

gallery-style picture hangers that attach to your ceiling would work. its a bar that runds across your ceiling where it meets the wall, you can hang anything from it.

plus, this way if you want to change the height/location/art on the wall you can!

3M adhesive hooks work really well - I just used them to hang a parge canvas from MD-Canvas in my bosses corporate apartment (she's not allowed to put holes in the walls)

Another source for brick clips:
http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=10437&cat=2,51520
The bricks have to stick out from the mortar in order to use these though, they don't work if the brick is flush with the mortar.

couldn't you just replace the current molding with picture rail molding and then hang up the art piece?

VELCRO, I know it seems funny but I had the same issue. And I put a few strips of velcro on the back and it worked. You can adhere them along the sides or down the middle. All I can say is it worked.

Cheap solution for light items--may not work for you with these heavier ones. Take a clothespin and wedge it into the space between the bricks (if there's more mortar and no space it won't work) Depending on the spacing, you may want to take apart the clothespin. You can push the pieces towards each other until the entire thing is tight. Then, you can gently hammer a nail into the clothespin and hang the item.

It's a trick I picked up in a college dorm with lots of brick. Brick clips may be better, but we were broke and couldn't find any.