Nevada’s past and future are closely intertwined with the nuclear history and politics of the United States. Under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site)—located just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas—saw the detonation of 928 nuclear devices between 1951 and 1992. Visual artists from around the world have responded in a myriad of ways to this nuclear legacy—and the Nevada Museum of Art houses a number of artworks in its permanent collection related to this subject matter.

This exhibition is organized in conjunction with the 2018 NV STEAM Conference, a statewide education conference focused on ideas and strategies that incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math education into innovative classroom practices that foster student creativity and innovation. The NV STEAM Conference was presented in partnership with the Desert Research Institute’s Science Alive program and supported by the Nevada Department of Education and the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council.

A highlight of the E.L. Wiegand Work Ethic Collection, American artist Helen Lundeberg’s History of Transportation traces a progression of labor from the Native American era to the dawn of the airline industry in the 1940s. During the Great Depression, Lundeberg proposed her concept for a public mural celebrating the ongoing contributions of workers to society. Commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, Lundeberg’s mural was eventually constructed in the southern California city of Inglewood.

In 2018, the State of Israel marks seventy years since its founding by the United Nations following World War II. For this occasion, the Nevada Museum of Art presents work by two female Israeli artists who create work that is simultaneously grounded in the history of photography, while delivering a fresh and independent viewpoint to the dialogue surrounding art and environment.

Several years ago, the Nevada Museum of Art partnered with John and Catherine Farahi to organize a trip to Israel for Museum patrons that combined historical and cultural site visits with architecture tours, museum visits and stops at artists’ studios. Two of the contemporary artists that the group encountered—established sculptor and video artist Michal Rovner, and mid-career photographer Tal Shochat—resonated with the group and with the Museum’s focus on artists and their creative interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments. Works by Rovner and Shochat have been brought together for this exhibition marking Israel’s anniversary.

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Premier Sponsor

Atlantis Casino Resort Spa | Catherine and John Farahi

Lead Sponsor

Anonymous

Major Sponsor

John and Carol Ann Badwick

Sponsor

Susan Baker, Wawona Foundation
Crystal Family Foundation

Supporting Sponsors

Nancy Flanigan; Heidi Allyn Loeb; Mary Catherine and Ken Pierson; Sandy Raffealli | Bill Pearce Motors; Suzanne Silverman and Dennis Dworkin

Additional Support

Iris and Mark Frank; Mimi Ellis-Hogan; Sharon and Gary Jacobson; Hy Kashenberg; Gary Lieberthal; Cary Lurie; Nancy and Alan Maiss; Jacob Margolis; Leslie and Steve Pansky; Joan and Michael Pokroy; Jean Venneman and YaYa Jacoby; Darby and David Walker

The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych explores the noted New York artist’s creative arc from early, hyperrealist works through more introspective and fantastical later works. The exhibition’s centerpiece is The Fulbright Triptych, a monumental three-part work measuring fourteen across that Roberta Smith, The New York Times art critic once described as “a crackling, obsessive showboat of a painting, dreamed up during a decade when the medium supposedly teetered on the brink of death.”

The visually complex Triptych is part autobiographical essay, part homage to Renaissance artists and their craft, part reflection on the historical legacies of the 20th century, and part meditation on the power of images to inspire across time and place. In addition to The Fulbright Triptych, the exhibition includes examples of Dinnerstein’s subtly evocative drawings and paintings from the 1960s through the 1990s, which continually interrogate the role of art in lived human experience.

The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych seeks to engage visitors and the broader public in discussions of what individual works of art mean, and how significance and relevance are constructed from different viewpoints. The exhibition was organized by the Museum of Art & Archaeology, University of Missouri in collaboration with the Nevada Museum of Art.

Hear more about the story behind The Fulbright Triptych in this NPR story.

Join the Museum and Classical Tahoe on Friday, July 20 for a one-of-a-kind event that celebrates art, life, and the bonds of family. “A Conversation on the Mysteries of Art and Family” is a discussion between acclaimed musician Simone Dinnerstein and her father, visual artist Simon Dinnerstein. Following this discussion between father and daughter, Simone Dinnerstein will perform selections from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The evening begins with an intimate reception and exhibition preview. Purchase tickets.

Sponsors

Jan and David Hardie; Charlotte and Dick McConnell; Madylon and Dean Meiling

For more than two decades Maya Lin (b. 1959) has engaged the vocabulary of a cartographer, making artworks ranging from stand-alone sculptures to room-sized installations that help people visualize the complex natural and cultural systems operating in the world. In 2012 the Nevada Museum of Art invited Lin to make new artworks in response to the unique Lake Tahoe landscape. After visiting with scientists at the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Lin created a series of sculptures that make visible the bones of the planet—in part by manufacturing an architecture of its natural features.

Pin River—Tahoe Watershed (2012) is a large-scale wall installation made from thousands of straight pins showing the perimeter of Lake Tahoe and its tributaries. Straight pins have long been used as markers on maps to signify the location of the viewer or the site of a specific place or event. By aggregating thousands of custom-made pins into maps of large-scale geographic features, Lin reverses our standard notion of figure to ground. Viewers begin to realize how rivers and lakes actually consist of many thousands of individual incidents of rain and snow, flood and drought, pools and waterfalls, bays and inlets. By, literally, pinning down the watershed of Lake Tahoe, Lin maps its hydrological complexity, while at the same time unifying it as a whole.

Sponsor:

Jenny and Garrett Sutton | Corporate Direct, Inc.

James Turrell is an artist whose media are light and space, and for the last forty years he has been carefully sculpting the cinder cone of an extinct volcano near Flagstaff into one of the world’s largest and most important land based sculptures.

Turrell first studied psychology and mathematics before earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1966, the year that he first began experimenting with light projections as sculpture. In the 1970s he started building “skyspaces,” which feature openings cut into or constructed as part of roofs. These apertures, which make apparent the way color changes in the sky over time, are also designed to evoke a feeling in the viewer that the sky is close enough to touch. Turrell has been commissioned since then to install dozens of these architectural sculptures in museums across the United States and Europe, and as far away as Australia. He has also created skyspaces for many private clients, including the Louis Vuitton store in Las Vegas.

Turrell has received major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Bund Long Museum of Shanghai, among others. A museum devoted solely to his work opened in Argentina in 2009. He received a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1984, and the National Medal of Arts in 2013.

The photographs and archival materials on view in this exhibition are on loan from the Lannan Foundation. 

Sponsor

Louise A. Tarble Foundation

The Nevada Museum of Art is the largest provider of arts education in the State of Nevada. As such, one of our primary goals is to give Museum visitors the opportunity to see masterful artworks in an intimate setting and facilitate fluency in the language of art. Manet to Maya Lin presents artworks drawn from the collections of the Nevada Museum of Art, augmented by select loans from private collections. These include paintings by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Mark Rothko, among others. Visitors are encouraged to experiment with visual arts literacy tools known as close looking; recognizing technique; and discussion to develop a deeper connection to these extraordinary artworks.

We live in an increasingly visual world, where images are superseding words as our primary form of communication. The ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from images impacts our capacity to successfully navigate language, communication, and critical human interaction. As one of the older forms of human communication, the language of art has always been a vital component for navigating our own visual literacy. In this light, constructing meaning from art becomes less an elite skill reserved for the halls of academia and more of an essential aptitude to succeed in a digital world.

Through personal engagements with both historically significant and experimental contemporary artists, we learn to look for details and we recognize important artistic processes and techniques. Most importantly, we learn to actively construct meaning through conversation.  Manet to Maya Lin has the power to show us the ways we create meaning from art: By walking through the galleries and experiencing the works of art on display, we open ourselves to the possibilities of a visually literate society.

Sponsor

Louise A. Tarble Foundation

Since 1999, Northern Nevada middle and high school students have been invited to submit their artwork to the Scholastic Art Awards competition. The Museum’s annual presentation of the Scholastic Art Awards is scheduled in conjunction with the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, a national program designed to identify America’s most gifted young artists and writers. This program has honored some of our nation’s most celebrated artists including Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Michael Sarich, Cindy Sherman, Robert Redford and Andy Warhol.

More than 2,200 submissions were evaluated by a panel of judges made up of local artists and art professionals. Exceptional works were awarded Gold Key, Silver Key or Honorable Mentions. Gold Key artwork goes on to compete in the national Scholastic Art Awards competition. Select award-winning regional entries will be exhibited in a month-long exhibition at the Holland Project Gallery at 140 Vesta Street in Reno. American Visions Nominees will be displayed in the Donald W Reynolds Grand Hall at the Museum.

2018 Awards: Northern Nevada Awards  |  National Awards

Sponsor

Bank of America and the Hearst Foundations

Additional support

City of Reno Arts & Culture Commission
The Nell J. Redfield Foundation
The Wild Women Artists

EVENTS

2018 Scholastic Art Awards Gold Key Exhibition Opening Reception

Friday February 2, 2018 / 6 – 8 pm

Join us in celebrating the Gold Key award-winning students of 2018 and the opening of their exhibition at the Holland Project gallery at 140 Vesta Street in Reno. FREE Admission

2018 Scholastic Art Awards Ceremony

Thursday February 8, 2018 / 6 – 7 pm

Please join us in honoring the winners of the Scholastic Art Awards 2018. All award winners are invited to this ceremony at the Museum attended by students, parents, teachers and members of the community. Due to limited space, award-winning students may bring up to two guests and educators may bring one guest. FREE Admission

Take Me Home Huey is an art experience dedicated to Americans that served in the Vietnam War. Artist Steve Maloney partnered with Light Horse Legacy, a non-profit outreach organization supporting veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), to create a 47-foot mixed-media sculpture made from a re-purposed U.S. Army Huey helicopter shot down in Vietnam. It’s a colorful ambassador – literally and figuratively – and a catalyst for conversations for veterans from all conflicts.  Take Me Home Huey promotes healing and aims to bring awareness to PTS, and is dedicated to the 2,709,918 Americans that served in Vietnam and never received a welcome home.

The sculpture will be installed in the Museum parking lot, complemented by a multi-day screening of the award-winning documentary Take Me Home Huey documentary and other veteran-focused programming.

Admission to the Nevada Museum of Art, and to all Take Me Home Huey programs over the three days, will be free for veterans and active service men and women.

For more information visit Take Me Home Huey.

Exclusive Sponsor

Clark/Sullivan Construction

A decade ago, Eleanor Preger never imagined herself taking photographs at Burning Man. Highlights of this Incline Village-based photographer’s work will be on view in the Nightingale Sky Room.