DENVER, CO.- The Clyfford Still Museum will open the new multisensory exhibition Still in Sound on May 16. Co-curated by Bailey Placzek, the Museum’s curator of collections, and Ben Coleman, a British multidisciplinary artist, Still in Sound explores how visitors may experience abstract visual language through sound in the Museum’s six largest galleries. Additionally, the Museum will open a special-feature exhibition, Celebrating 15 Years: 15 New Paintings in 15 Months, in the first gallery, and a chronological display of Still’s works in the first three galleries.
The Still in Sound curators engaged contemporary artists who work with sound in their practice, including Maria Chávez, Maya Dunietz, Kalyn Heffernan, Matana Roberts, and Michael Schumacher. After brief Museum residencies, each artist selected an abstract Clyfford Still artwork and composed an original, sonic interpretation in response. Their selections and resulting compositions set the tone for each gallery, then Placzek filled the rooms with other artworks that resonated with their contributions. Coleman curated the artist’s sound interpretations to create a holistic, immersive environment through the galleries. Denver artist Phillip David Stearns also designed a special interactive experience for the exhibition in response to Still’s pastel drawings.
While curating the rooms around the sound interpretations, Placzek said she made assumptions about what each piece would sound like based on the artists’ selected paintings. “I tried to stay true to the process and curate the rooms based on the sounds I heard, but it was challenging to separate my own responses from the artists’,” said Placzek. “This led to some of the galleries having a very different mood than I expected, which is exciting and reinforces just how varied and individual our interpretations of Still’s paintings can be.”
According to Coleman, the exhibition is not meant to be a linear experience, and the works play in a somewhat shuffled order to allow visitors to interact with the sounds as they wish. “There is no set path, no beginning or end, and every visit will be different,” says Coleman. “Our guest artists’ interpretations give us the chance to inhabit their individual experiences of the work, and compare or blend them with our own.”
The Still in Sound exhibition digital guide on Bloomberg Connects enables visitors to experience the show at their own pace. The digital guide includes full recordings of each sonic interpretation, artist biographies, behind-the-scenes interviews with each guest artist, and descriptive text for persons with hearing loss. The guide will also include a sound tour following Still’s chronological collection highlights in the first three galleries. The sound tour features American experimental music and sound art created during the same years as the artworks in each room, along with examples from the Clyfford Still Museum Archives, such as excerpts by some of Still’s favorite composers, samples from his record collection, and archival recordings of Still playing the piano.
Throughout the run of Still in Sound, the Museum will offer quiet hours without soundscapes from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on the first Saturday and the third Wednesday of each month. Visitors may also borrow complimentary noise-canceling headphones from the front desk at any time.
The Still in Sound Guest Artists
Matana Roberts is a sound experimentalist, musician, and alto saxophonist who works in many performance and sound mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater. Roberts is best known for their acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multichapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” and mixed-media performance. Roberts selected PH-977, 1957.
Kalyn Rose Heffernan describes herself as a “wheelchair-using, rap-heavy, freedom-fighting producer, educator, and foul-mouthed rabble-rouser.” She fronts the internationally acclaimed band Wheelchair Sports Camp, which has stretched into theatre, performance art, television, politics, prison tours, and permanent installations. Heffernan also fights for access and human rights. Heffernan selected PH-1161, 1960.
Based in Brooklyn, pioneering American sound artist and composer Michael J. Schumacher has innovated in spatialized sound and algorithmic composition since the 1980s, creating multichannel generative Room Pieces presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, and public and private spaces. Through XI Records, Schumacher created and published a DVD set of five sound installations as computer applications. Schumacher selected PH-716, 1970.
Born in Lima, Peru, and based in New York City, Maria Chávez is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Her approach is rooted in Deep Listening, a form of embodied listening developed by her late mentor. She is the only abstract turntablist in the world who performs with a RAKE Double Needle. Chávez selected PH-1074, 1956–59, and PH-1187, 1956.
Maya Dunietz is an artist and musician who has been performing internationally for the past thirty years. She works at the intersection of music, visual art, performance, technological research, and philosophy. Her compositions are commissioned by renowned performers and ensembles worldwide. Dunietz selected PH-63, 1962.
Denver artist Phillip David Stearns designed a special interactive experience for the exhibition, inspired by Still’s pastel artworks on construction paper and the show’s development process. Stearns employs electronics, digital technologies, and emerging materials to give form to the intangible. His work draws from music and sound art, expanded photography, installation art, textile art, new media, and digital art.
Still in Sound and the chronological collection highlights will close on February 14, 2027. Still in Sound is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Artemisa Foundation.
Celebrating 15 Years: 15 New Paintings in 15 Months
Fifteen years after the Clyfford Still Museum opened, roughly two-thirds of its art collection has never been on public view. In Celebrating 15 Years, the Still will unveil 15 paintings that Still created between 1947 and 1973, introducing one new artwork each month in the first gallery for 15 months. Each painting will debut with behind-the-scenes insights on the Museum’s digital guide.
“Many of the paintings are ones we've been eager to display but are difficult to make work alongside other paintings in the galleries, for whatever reason,” says Placzek. “We also wanted to bring out a few that might surprise people and reveal some of the roads not traveled in Still's 60-year artistic trajectory.”
