Photo of Convention Center Interior
It is not uncommon for a venue to have open beam ceilings, presuming they and the ceiling are painted black. (Long Beach CC for instance.) With show lighting, the ceiling disappears.
This assumes that the beams are load-bearing to sustain the weight of the trusses for the show lighting. The ideal is to have catwalks running within the trusses for lighting and facilitate rigging.
Venues with finished ceilings (such as Opryland) have ports in the ceiling (like grommets) through which the riggers have access to the steel (with catwalks.)
Without catwalks, the rigging time is quadrupled, and scissor lifts must be brought in. No mysteries, standard procedures.
If there are no catwalks in the early steel construction, it is not “state of the art.”
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