This installation consists of a dozen gilded bronze sculptures representing the animal symbols from the traditional Chinese zodiac. Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei drew inspiration for the twelve heads from those originally located at Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), an imperial retreat of palaces and European-style gardens built outside of Beijing in the 18th and 19th centuries by Emperor Qianlong. Designed and engineered by two European Jesuits, Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoit, the heads originally functioned as an ornate fountain clock that would spout water at two-hour intervals.

Once accessible only to the elite of 18th-century Chinese society, the garden was destroyed and looted by Anglo-French troops in 1860 during the Second Opium War, displacing the original zodiac heads. The seven heads known to exist (Monkey, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, and Horse) have all been returned to China. Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold engages issues of looting, repatriation, and cultural heritage while expanding upon ongoing themes in Ai’s work of the “fake” and “copy” in relation to the original.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

As Lake Tahoe became a popular destination for vacationers and tourists in the early twentieth century, demand for souvenirs and other mass-produced items grew rapidly. Travel photographers and enterprising commercial firms began to cater to an ever-increasing demand for souvenir images. The rise of offset printing and lithography led to the proliferation of printed postcards.

Visitors came to Lake Tahoe and the surrounding Sierra to enjoy a variety of recreational activities—including hiking, fishing, horseback riding, swimming, and boating. Increased access via railroad and automobile gave rise to tourism and a vibrant resort culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Just like today, visitors to Lake Tahoe in the early twentieth century, might have purchased postcards to send friends or to keep as personal mementos of their travels.

All postcards from the collection of Erik Flippo.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

Illustrations by BillyHawk Enos, Kevin Jones, Charles Munroe, and Mauricio Sandoval

The Washoe people have lived in the Lake Tahoe region for countless generations. They shared a common language, ancestral traditions, legends, and a great reverence for the lake.

Cultural preservation, and specifically language preservation, is important to the Washoe people and the Washoe Tribe today. In an effort to revitalize Washoe language and traditions for future generations, the Tribe’s language program—known as the Patalŋi Me?k’i Head Start Immersion Nest—recently published a series of children’s books with support from the Administration for Native Americans.

Four artists, BillyHawk Enos, Kevin Jones, Charles Munroe, and Mauricio Sandoval, illustrated the legends. The stories were retold and translated by Lisa Enos and Washoe Elder Melba Rakow. This exhibition features the original illustrations.

The books accompanying these original artworks are for sale in the Museum Store. Sales help to support Washoe youth language revitalization programs.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

A documentary produced by
KNPB in affiliation with the Nevada Museum of Art

This program was exclusively sponsored by Deborah Day in memory of Theodore J. Day.

Running time: Approximately 30 minutes (looped)

Watch the Tahoe Documentary online.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

The Washoe people have lived in the Lake Tahoe region for countless generations. They referred to Lake Tahoe as DaɁawɁaga, or “edge of the lake,” because they lived around its shore. The term was eventually shortened to DaɁaw, from which the word “Tahoe” is derived.

Different Washoe groups gathered annually at the lake during late spring and summer where they caught fish and gathered plant foods. The Welmelti were from a territory located roughly north of the lake, the Ṕawalu or “valley people” lived to its west, and the Huŋalelti were from the southern region. During the winter months, they returned to the lake’s adjacent valleys where elevations were lower and temperatures milder.

The annual trip to DaɁaw was eagerly anticipated. Its pure waters offered more than simple benefits—it was the life-sustaining element for the land, the plants, the fish, the birds, the animals, and all the people who lived around it. Once the Washoe people arrived at DaɁaw, they blessed themselves and the water in celebration of the harmony that existed among the people, the land, and the water. Every notable geographic feature and stream had a Washoe name.

Today, Washoe people carry on the traditions of their ancestors and encourage younger generations to do the same. Programs related to Washoe language preservation, basket weaving, fishing, and other traditional activities are offered and encouraged through the Washoe Cultural Advisory Committee. Special access is also granted in areas around the lake where Washoe people continue to gather native plants and other resources. Lake Tahoe continues to be a special and sacred place to all Washoe people.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

Tahoe’s hydrological impact extends far beyond its shores. The 400-square-mile greater Lake Tahoe watershed contains 63 tributaries, or streams, that flow into it from adjacent Sierra peaks. Lake Tahoe’s waters flow out and down the Truckee River 122 miles to the north and east before feeding Pyramid Lake, a terminus desert lake whose surface area rivals that of Tahoe and whose resources sustain the indigenous Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

Nineteenth-century artists depicted the region’s water in abundance—as a plentiful resource that could seemingly never be depleted. Recreation and agriculture, however, began to impact the larger watershed system’s water levels, clarity, and ecological makeup. The politics of how the lake’s water is distributed outside the Tahoe basin continues to be a complicated matter.

Today scientists race to study human impacts on Lake Tahoe so that conservation measures can be implemented to help manage the diverse interests that depend on the lake’s output. Federal officials declared parts of the Tahoe Basin a natural disaster area in 2014 due to severe drought and lack of water from diminishing snowmelt. Many living artists have created works that reflect on how issues related to water quality, distribution, and conservation affect the lake’s future.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

Lake Tahoe experienced rapid growth after World War II. Residential populations at the lake grew steadily, and with the rise of the ski industry and other recreation businesses, the number of visitors to the lake skyrocketed. Growth and development in the region reached a tipping point in the 1950s and 1960s, as plans for high-rise casinos, shoreline freeways, sprawling ski resorts, landfill marinas, and a four-lane concrete bridge across Emerald Bay gained forward momentum.

In 1957, a gathering of concerned conservationists formed what became known as The League to Save Lake Tahoe. They coined the iconic tagline, “Keep Tahoe Blue,” a conservationist slogan that remains popular to this day. The attitude that unchecked growth at the lake was a foregone conclusion precipitated local resistance, and ultimately led to a unique bi-state agreement governing planning and management of the lake and its resources.

Today millions of people visit the Tahoe/Donner region annually and nearly 50,000 people call it their permanent home. In the twenty-first century, one’s experience of Tahoe is sure to be mediated by commercial enterprise, advertising, and limited access to much of the lake’s privately-owned shore. Contemporary artists and architects invite us to look carefully at how this human presence impacts the fragile Lake Tahoe basin.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

While the Civil War raged in the eastern United States and Tahoe’s lumber industry rose to prominence to service Nevada’s booming Comstock mines, the Lake Tahoe region began its transformation into a landscape of tourism, leisure, and recreation. Easy railroad and automobile access to the region accelerated the growth of resorts around the lake in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Lake Tahoe became a place of rest and repose for the social and economic elite.

During this time resorts began to flourish, including Tahoe Tavern and the Grand Central Hotel near Tahoe City, the Glenbrook Inn on the east shore, and the Tallac Hotel on the south shore. As the region became more settled and accessible, artists could easily fold a visit to Lake Tahoe into their Pacific Coast travels, which might have also included a stay at Yosemite.

Many artists produced nostalgic or romantic images of the region, which were readily purchased as souvenirs by visitors and tourists. At the same time, many ofthe San Francisco Bay area’s most prominent architects were commissioned to design private residences in the Lake Tahoe basin, forever changing the nature of its built environment.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

In 1878, John Muir derided “the outlandish noise of loggers and choppers and screaming mills” that he witnessed during his stay at Lake Tahoe. The towering pine, cedar, and juniper stands in the Tahoe basin were quickly falling in the name of progress. Lumber was needed to construct railroad trestles and snow sheds over Donner Pass, to buttress the burgeoning underground mines of the Comstock, and to power the steam locomotives used to transport and process the ore. As populations and tourism increased in the region, timber was also used for resort and lodge structures on the panoramic shores of the lake.

The first sawmill at Lake Tahoe was built in 1860. The invention of the V-shaped flume and the completion of a narrow-gauge railroad vastly accelerated the transport of timber out of the Tahoe Basin. Muir returned to Lake Tahoe in 1888 and was deeply distressed by what he saw. Hillsides once covered in trees were barren. With the support of the railroad lobby and local timber baron Duane Bliss (who had, ironically, turned his logging property at Glenbrook into a tourist resort), Muir worked hard to have Lake Tahoe declared a national park. He came within only a few of the necessary votes in Congress, but the measure failed in 1889.

By 1900, almost a billion board feet of lumber had been removed from the Tahoe Basin and 60 percent of its lands had been harvested. Nineteenth-century painters and photographers rarely depicted the transformed landscape, and the few examples showing such subject matter are rare. In the twenty-first century, however, it is common for contemporary artists to explore issues related to forest conservation, reclamation, fire management, and sustainability in the region. Their work is on view alongside that of their historical predecessors.

This theme comprises one section of the museum-wide exhibition, Tahoe: A Visual History.

In 1844, trapper and frontiersman Elisha Stevens safely guided the first American emigrant wagons across the Sierra Nevada to California over what came to be known as Donner Pass. Two years later, the Donner Party sought to repeat this trek, but snow stranded them near the lake that would later bear the Donner name. Because of this disaster, a region destined to develop into a world-class destination first entered American history through a dystopian scenario of starvation, death, murder, and cannibalism.

One might think that the tragedy of the Donner Party would have provided a warning for generations to come. In the American West, however, dystopia remained a recurrent possibility. The Sierra Nevada and Donner Pass stood as a barrier to America’s desire to expand westward. As the transcontinental railroad neared completion in 1869, over 20,000 men were employed by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies in some capacity. Around 12,000 of them were Chinese immigrants working in the treacherous Sierra canyons. Accidents, avalanches, and explosions, according to some reports, left as many as 1,200 Chinese laborers dead.

The nineteenth-century paintings and photographs of Donner Pass seen throughout this exhibition tend to offer romantic views of picturesque rail cars and pristine landscapes. Whether intentionally or not, artists typically marginalized or ignored the presence of Chinese workers. Many Chinese and Chinese-American artists working today seek to revisit this visual history, producing artworks in a variety of media to honor and memorialize the stories of those who perished during the construction of the railroad.