Steve McQueen Exhibition at
The Art Institute of Chicago

Location
Chicago, Illinois

Owner
The Art Institute of Chicago

Team
Museography - Threshold
Museum Consultant - Larry Smallwood

Size
18,000 square feet

Schedule
Completed 2012

Director Steve McQueen’s filmography is an immersive experience partially due to the amazing soundscape. For his solo exhibition at the Art Institute, the team helped curators keep those soundscape and film exhibits from overlapping each other.

Using mostly the Art Institute’s standard demountable panels, and with careful attention to ventilation systems, this 3-month exhibit explored isolation completely without doors: separating a screaming trip-hop recording artist from a somber memorial of UK military service members killed in action; and protecting a silent film from the pounding South African coal mine video next door.

Custom-designed acoustic treatments are tailored to the geometry and audio content of each room - recording studio diffusion for the trip-hop piece, and lots of extra bass absorption for the coal mine, for example. The varied acoustic treatments are hidden behind an acoustically neutral fabric to avoid drawing focus away from the screens.

Final tuning was with the artist himself and the exhibit was received with high praise from the press.