It’s Renkus-Heinz to the rescue as highly reverberant acoustical environment proves anything but conducive to the large-screen video presentation that runs in the museum’s entrance lobby. Clyfford Still, one of the giants in post-WWII American painting, dropped out of the commercial art world in 1951. When he died in 1980, he donated his entire collection to an American city willing to create a permanent home for it. More than three decades later, the Clyfford Still Museum has opened its doors in downtown Denver. The 28,000-square-foot steel and concrete building houses more than 2400 of Still’s works, as well as a collection of the artist’s journals, sketchbooks and archives. Visitors enter the museum through a massive glass-lined lobby whose windows extend from its tiled floors to its concrete ceiling. The strikingly beautiful architecture, while visually stunning, creates a highly reverberant acoustical environment that is anything but conducive to the large-screen video presentation that runs in the museum’s entrance lobby. Denver-based Empowercom was retained by the museum’s planning commission to address the lobby’s challenging acoustics. As Empowercom’s vice president Terri Jackson explains, the selection of Renkus-Heinz’s Iconyx steerable array loudspeakers was a logical choice. “The content management committee on the project had suggested the Iconyx system, and everyone involved unanimously agreed they were the only speakers that would meet the needs of the space,” says Jackson. “Being able to steer the sound away from the abundance of reflective surfaces was key. Using the Iconyx, we were able to focus the sound to a concentrated area directly in front of the screen, rather than create a cacophony across the entire lobby.” The Iconyx’s low profile design also helped to make it an ideal fit, says Jackson. “It’s a very high-end space, and the Iconyx really fits in with the décor,” she notes. “It’s an elegant, low-profile design that actually blends with the surroundings.” www.renkus-heinz.com
