Much like visual art, the enduring tradition of cowboy poetry is a rich and vital form of cultural expression in the American West. This exhibition is inspired by the classic and touching poem Equus Caballus, written by Texas poet Joel Nelson to honor the important role and contributions horses have made to the world. The exhibition combines a unique audiovisual presentation of Nelson reciting the poem with a selection of historical and contemporary paintings, photographs, and sculptural works drawn from the permanent collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, alongside a handful of special items on loan from private collections.

Joel Nelson’s poem Equus Caballus (the scientific or Latin name for “horse”) is especially powerful because it is one of the few poems that gives a voice to an animal whose longtime relationship to humans is emotionally layered and historically complex. Nelson’s poem elicits a range of feelings and emotions that resonate with anyone who has spent time with horses and respects them as patient and faithful animals.

In many ways, the visual artworks included in this exhibition also reflect the myriad roles and relationships that horses have had—and continue to have—with humans. From artworks that relate the longtime importance of horses to indigenous people, to photographs of cowboys with their animal partners on the range, and prints and paintings that capture the stoic pride of these stately animals, visual artists using a variety of media their effort to elucidate the essence of the human relationship to the horse.

This exhibition was developed jointly by the Nevada Museum of Art in collaboration with the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada.

The artworks that comprise the E.L. Wiegand Collection date from the early twentieth century to the present and represent various manifestations of the work ethic in American art. While many emphasize men or women undertaking the physical act of labor, others focus on different types of work environments ranging from domestic interiors and rural landscapes to urban cityscapes and industrial scenes. By expanding the definition of the term work ethic to encompass a broad range of activities undertaken by a diverse spectrum of people from various cultural and socioeconomic groups, the collection seeks to acknowledge all those who have devoted their lives to the tireless pursuit of work.

Over the past century, American artists have approached the subject of work from many points of view and with a variety of artistic styles. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, artists frequently chose to idealize scenes of work. Often this idealization took the form of agricultural landscapes featuring hard-working, farmers who epitomized the spirit of American democracy. During the 1920s and 1930s, this attention was re-focused on industrialization, and images of physically-fit, muscular workers came to symbolize the nation’s advanced industrial technology. Simultaneously, however, many Realist painters sought to convincingly portray the deplorable urban working conditions that were encountered by many of the nation’s poorest workers—a trend that continued during the era of the Great Depression, when artists shifted their attention to documenting the hardships faced by migratory, agricultural workers.

Perhaps the most influential event to impact the production of art in the United States was the launch of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Program that was intended to put millions of unemployed Americans back to work in the 1930s. The inauguration of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—a special fine arts component of the New Deal—aimed to employ thousands of artists across the country. While many of the paintings, sculptures, and public murals produced under the auspices of the program featured American men and women at work, the program itself helped to validate the important contributions artists make to society and formally invited them to join the venerable ranks of the American workforce.

For nearly fifty years, Don Dondero was celebrated as one of Reno’s most notable and accomplished publicity photographers. From capturing civic celebrations and commercial commissions, to significant regional events and Reno’s illustrious celebrity nightlife, Dondero was one of northern Nevada’s most called-upon photographers for over fifty years. Dondero loved taking pictures and rarely turned down a job.

Born in Ely, Nevada in 1920 and raised in Carson City, Dondero served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy in World War II before taking up photography. Upon Dondero’s return to Reno, he picked up his first camera and never looked back. Along with his wife Liz Dondero, he built a successful photography business—focusing on freelance work, Don worked primarily out of a downtown Reno studio located above the CalNeva Casino (located at 150 N. Virginia St.) From 1973 to 1978, the Dondero family operated a popular camera shop—Parklane Cameras — located in Park Lane Mall.

A prolific photographer, Dondero supplied a steady stream of images to both regional and San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. As northern Nevada’s primary Associated Press photographer, his work was also distributed widely round the world. Upon Dondero’s passing in 2003, he left a treasure trove of visual material that documents and memorializes a bygone era—and cements his legacy as one of northern Nevada’s most prolific and important photographers

The photographs on view are on loan from the private collection of Debbie Dondero and were all shot in Reno, Nevada during the 1950s.  The exhibit was organized by guest curator Carol Buckman.

Beautification Machine is an experiential artwork infused with mysticism and opacity. In the words of the artists, Diaz Hope and Bernson, Beautification Machine is a device used to “neutralize the bile and fear spewed forth daily over the networks and transform polarizing media sources into vehicles of contemplation and peace.” The work combines functions of sculpture, projection, audio processing and random chance to manipulate real-time audio and video feeds from FOX, MSNBC or any other news source, and then strip them of all rhetoric and partisanship. Beautification Machine’s essence is antithetical— an oasis of calm created from the very thing that makes it difficult to find serenity in the modern world. The artists hope viewers will begin to break patterns of fear and paralysis instilled by the media and find ways to enact positive change. Beautification Machine is a humorous attempt to counteract the voices of partisan pundits, “masquerading as news analysts,” who subvert civil dialogue. Diaz Hope and Bernson describe “the miracle” of the piece as the meditative environment naturally generated by the removal of divisive elements—fear replaced by empathy, mutual understanding and a sense of calm. Diaz Hope and Bernson profess they will closely guard the secret machinations of their work for fear that the mainstream media will “surely attempt to steal the device” for malevolent purposes. Though transparent as whimsical exaggerations, the artists’ statements bring a humorous brand of paranoia, magical thinking, and antiauthoritarianism to the overwhelming media presence in the modern world.

This exhibition presents eleven extraordinary paintings by Southern California artist Daniel Douke dating from 2007-15. (more…)

Humans rarely appear in the photographs on view in this exhibition, yet their presence is undeniable. In these photographs, drawn from the permanent collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, photographers reveal the ways that individuals and industries have marked, mined, toured, tested, developed, occupied, and exploited landscapes over the last fifty years. While the images take various approaches, together they offer a panoramic sweep of the contentious social and political debates that have shaped contemporary discourse on the changing environment. Both cautionary and confessional, they also define challenges facing our global future.

Much has been written recently about landscape photography’s paradigm shift in the 1970s and the integration of the medium into larger arenas of contemporary art. In an effort to depart from idealized notions of scenic beauty and the romantic sensibilities of modern nature photography, a small group of photographers working mostly in the American West turned their cameras toward everyday, mundane landscapes. These image-makers, referred to now as the New Topographic photographers, made works that framed industrial structures, suburban developments, and other ordinary subjects with unprecedented matter-of-fact realism. Around the same time, practitioners of the Dusseldorf School pushed the technical limits of photography in their production of large-format color images that were globally oriented toward revisionist interpretations of social space. Both groups inspired artists around the world, who adopted their photographic strategies and visual vocabularies to make images that revealed landscapes as suitable places for social and political inquiry.

The Altered Landscape Photography Collection is the largest focus collection of the Nevada Museum of Art permanent collection. Since its establishment in the early 1990s, the collection has included images that address and engage issues related to land use and the changing landscape. In 1998 an endowment for Altered Landscape acquisitions was established through the generosity of the Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

The paintings of Cedra Wood can be interpreted as fables: she uses a realistic approach to portray herself and others in exotic and fictionalized places that leave viewers seeking greater meaning. Dreamlike and mythical, her paintings are peaceful yet threatening puzzles to be deciphered. As complicated as they may be, however, the artistic practice that she employs to produce them is even more involved.

For many months of the year, Wood traverses places ranging from the Outback of Australia to the glaciers of Svalbard. She drives desolate roads, sometimes camping or staying at science stations along the way. She weaves and sews costumes during her travels—often from native materials collected on site. She then constructs mysterious narratives for her photographs. At the same time she sketches and writes elaborate journals, miniature letters in bottles, and on other objects found along the way.

Wood’s paintings are influenced by folk music, science fiction, and Celtic mysticism, as well as surrealism and contemporary performance art. They are compelling because she never reveals their meaning. Rather, she offers viewers glimpses of a world where one’s imagination is free to discover meaning based on personal experience and free association.

From 2012 to 2014, Wood was a Center for Art +Environment Research Fellow. Many of the materials shown here are drawn from her archives at the Center.

David Taylor began photographing along the U.S. Mexico border between El Paso/Juarez and San Diego/Tijuana in 2007. The border is demarcated by 276 stone obelisks, most of which were installed from 1891-95. In 2014, Taylor finished documenting all of the monuments that mark the international boundary west of the Rio Grande. This undertaking led to encounters with migrants, U.S. Customs and Border Protections agents, human smugglers, members of the civilian border-watch group known as the Minutemen, and residents living along the border.

Taylor traveled both alone and in the company of agents, and his photographs were published in the book and portfolio Monuments, which contains views of all the border obelisks. While Taylor worked on this project, the Border Patrol doubled in size and the federal government constructed more than 600 miles of pedestrian and vehicular fencing, and added seismic sensors to detect the government has attained “operational control” in many border areas—but people continue to cross. Much of that traffic occurs in the most remote, rugged areas of the southwest deserts.

In 2014 Taylor and internationally-renowned Tijuana artist Marcos Ramírez ERRE undertook a second border project, tracing the original 1821 northern boundary of what was then the newly independent Mexico. The line stretched from present-day northern California to the Gulf of Mexico, west of New Orleans. That boundary was never surveyed or physically marked and exists only as a reference on historic maps. For DeLIMITations, ERRE and Taylor marked the 1821 border between Mexico and the western territories of the United States by installing 47 sheet metal markers to mimic the existing monuments. The artists asked the question: “What would Mexico and the United States look like had that boundary been fully realized?”

Monuments and DeLIMITations presents the selections from the border monuments portfolio, one of the markers designed for the mapping project done by ERRE and Taylor, and extensive historical and contemporary materials drawn from the project archives of the Center for Art + Environment Archive Collections.

Nevada Museum of Art Curatorial Director and Curator of Contemporary Art JoAnne Northrup has partnered with Las Vegas-based art advisor Michele Quinn to co-curate Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada. The exhibition bridges the divide between Northern and Southern Nevada communities and provides a wide-ranging overview and understanding of the most accomplished work being created by more than thirty artists living and working in Nevada today.

The first nationally significant exhibition presenting art made in Nevada occurred in 2007 with Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland, on view at the Las Vegas Art Museum, which has since closed. Organized by the well-respected art critic and curator Dave Hickey, the exhibition celebrated the work of twenty-six artists, all of whom received their degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and studied with Hickey between 1990 and 2001 when he taught art theory and criticism in the Department of Art at UNLV.

Fast forward almost ten years later. After more than fifty artist studio visits in both Northern and Southern Nevada across Nevada, spanning Las Vegas to the south, Reno and Carson City in the north. Northrup and Quinn’s research revealed that the Nevada contemporary art scene does not evidence a singular aesthetic permeating artists’ work, but rather a wide array of practices and media. Nevada artists are creating innovative work ranging from painting, sculpture, and installation, to photography, interactive, and sound art. Their work is informed by popular culture, the natural environment, and landscape, as well as cultural identity, politics, and current events.

Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada aspires to provide contemporary dialogue aimed at enlightening our broader audiences to the richness of our entire arts community and how it can be a powerful tool in the growth of the great state of Nevada. The exhibition highlights the work of six artists in depth, showing several examples from each in a variety of media. Featured artists include Galen Brown, Justin Favela, Katie Lewis, David Ryan, Brent Sommerhauser, and Rachel Stiff. The remaining artists’ work will give visitors a wide-ranging picture of the art being created across Nevada today, including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, mixed media, street art, installation, sound performance, fiber arts and new media. Some work, like that of Reno photographer Megan Berner, will live exclusively on social media. Berner plans to take daily photographs of the Northern Nevada sky for the eleven-week duration of the exhibition. The images will post to the Nevada Museum of Art Instagram account, allowing the community to view the body of work as it develops over time.

Additional collaborations and offsite installations are planned as well. Las Vegas-based artist Brent Sommerhauser will collaborate with Reno-based Holland Project and Nevada Museum of Art E.L. Cord Museum School to create small ‘sketches’ in glass by layering rich color combinations of glass powder, glass strings and other glass elements over handmade glass tiles that Sommerhauser will fire on-site in his kiln. The resulting tiles will be photographed and shared on the Nevada Museum of Art Instagram account and displayed in the E.L. Cord Museum School. The combined tiles will contribute to a growing work that will serve as a participant record. Performance art elements of the show include Justin Favela’s Family Fiesta.

Tilting the Basin: Contemporary Art of Nevada will be reprised in Las Vegas in 2017. Artists chosen for the exhibition have not before had work prominently displayed at the Museum:

#TiltingTheBasin

Las Vegas

Chris Bauder, Mark Brandvik, JW Caldwell, Matthew Couper, Gig Depio, Justin Favela, Sush Machida Gaikotsu, Shawn Hummel, Wendy Kveck, JK Russ, David Ryan, David Sanchez Burr, Sean Slattery, Brent Sommerhauser, Brent Holmes, Krystal Ramirez, Rachel Stiff

Reno/Carson

Megan Berner, Rebekah Bogard, Galen Brown, Erik Burke, Nate Clark, Tim Conder, Joseph DeLappe + Pete Froslie, Russell Dudley, Jeffrey Erickson, Jen Graham, Ahren Hertel, Katty Hoover, Eunkang Koh, Nick Larsen, Katie Lewis, Sarah Lillegard, Omar Pierce

Download the Press Release

Premier Sponsor

Stacie Mathewson and Doors to Recovery

Lead Sponsor

Wayne and Miriam Prim

Major Sponsor

Jacqueline Black

Supporting Sponsors

Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller; Nevada Arts Council; The Private Bank by Nevada State Bank

Sponsors

Kathie Bartlett; Elaine Cardinale; Barbara and Tad Danz; Dolan Law, LLC; Tammy M. and Brian E. Riggs; Sari and Ian Rogoff

Media Sponsors

Getaway Reno-Tahoe; Juxtapoz Magazine; KUNR Reno Public Radio; Nevada Magazine; Reno-Tahoe International Airport; Tahoe Quarterly; Western Art and Architecture

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 1,400 submissions were evaluated this year 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 are 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.

All award winners are invited to a ceremony at the Museum attended by over 400 students, parents, teachers and members of the community. National award winners have the opportunity to attend a ceremony in New York City.

View the complete list of regional winners: Scholastic Art Awards 2016.

Lead sponsor

Bank of America

Additional support

City of Reno Arts and Culture Commission, Amerco, the Nell J. Redfield Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, and the Wild Women Artists