Signaling the Nevada Museum of Art’s ongoing commitment to contemporary photography, William Eggleston: Los Alamos will feature seventy-five of the iconic American artist’s vivid color images taken in the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Los Alamos, and Los Angeles between 1965 and 1974.

His compelling photographs capture the unexpected beauty of parked cars, people, billboards, and abandoned storefronts across the American landscape. Eggleston titled the series Los Alamos, after the national laboratory in New Mexico where atomic weapons were developed.

Born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, Eggleston is largely credited with legitimizing color photography as a fine art form. In 1976 the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited Eggleston’s photographs in a groundbreaking solo exhibition—the first fine-art exhibition of color photography almost a century after the introduction of color film.

In anticipation of the Museum’s 80th Anniversary in 2011, contemporary artist Jacob Hashimoto was commissioned to create a large-scale, site-specific artwork to hang in the Donald W. Reynolds Grand Hall. Hashimoto’s sculpture—fabricated from thousands of small “kites”—is made from bamboo-stiffened rice papers not unlike those used for centuries to make traditional Japanese kites.

The three-dimensional cascading form—which could be interpreted as a peaceful, floating cloud or a spiraling vortex—is suspended by nylon mono-filament and responds specifically to the Museum’s unique architecture and changing light.

The sculpture is dedicated to the Volunteers in Art (VIA), in recognition of the many individuals who donate countless hours to advance the institution’s mission.

Major sponsor

Volunteers in Art (VIA) and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Colorado artist Hunt Rettig’s three-dimensional, mixed media assemblages are made with unexpected combinations of materials, including polyester film, synthetic rubber, plastic, wood, silicone, metal nuts and bolts, and acrylic paints. Possessed of preternatural luminosity and largely indecipherable construction, these works are suggestive of the organic, the cellular, the sensual, and the bodily.

With respect to his vision, Rettig explains: “Within my terrain I see cross sections of cross sections, unnatural confluences, unnavigable borders, unrestricted constriction and breath-like expansion. Especially with plantlike forms I see what I can best describe as the invisibly visible…landscapes unnatural yet natural at the same time.”

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 1,100 submissions are evaluated annually by a panel of judges made up of local artists and art professionals and exceptional work is awarded either a Gold Key, Silver Key or Honorable Mention. Gold Key artwork goes on to compete in the national Scholastic Art Awards completion. Select award winning regional entries are exhibited in a month long exhibition, which will be held at the Holland Project Gallery at 140 Vesta Street in Reno. Regional award winners are invited to attend an awards ceremony at the Museum attended by over 400 students, parents, teachers and members of the community. National award winners are invited to attend an awards ceremony in New York City.

Sponsor

U.S. Bancorp Foundation

Additional support

Wild Women Artists

Submissions

Submissions for the 2013 Scholastic Art Awards are currently being accepted. All work must be digitally uploaded to www.artandwriting.org by January 19, 2013. Completed submission forms and fees are due on January 19, 2013, and must be delivered to:

Nevada Museum of Art
Attn: Jacque Dawson
160 West Liberty Street
Reno, NV 89501

For additional information on the submission guidelines, categories and deadlines or to begin the submission process, please visit: www.artandwriting.org.

If you have questions about The Scholastic Art Awards, please contact Jacque Dawson, Nell J. Redfield School Services Manager, by email or at 775.398.7253.

This exhibition surveys the architecture, urban planning, and design work of American architect William L. Pereira through images, models, drawings, and plans. The exhibition re-examines the modest spaces he created early in his career and the large-scale structures for which he is largely remembered.

The structures Pereira designed were far-flung and often large in scale, ranging from San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Tower to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the University of California, San Diego Geisel Library to the master plan for California’s Irvine Ranch and the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); Marineland of the Pacific to Cape Canaveral; a master plan for Doha—the capital city of Qatar—to the National Medical Center of Iran. Pereira became the first architect for the University of California system and master planned and designed many of the buildings for the University of California, Irvine.

The purpose of the project is to frame Pereira’s practice within the histories of architectural modernism and southern California in the mid-twentieth century. Because Pereira’s career parallels the arc of modern architecture and its focus on iconic form, the evolution and trajectory of his work sheds light on the closing window of the modern movement.

Photography is encouraged in this exhibition. Post and share your images with us on your favorite social sites!

Become and Museum fan on Facebook (LINK) and take part in our daily competition throughout August. Answer the question: “What am I looking at?” for the chance to win a prize. A BIG thank you to Scott Mortimore of Mortimore Creative for the images and prose!

Exhibition design by Nik Hafermaas, Uebersee (LINK)

CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition. The book is introduced by Colin M. Robertson with essays by Curtis Fentress, Alan Hess, Thomas S. Hines, Scott Johnson, Geoff Manaugh, JoAnne S. Northrup, and Elizabeth A.T. Smith. Copies are available for $29.99 in the Museum Store. To purchase a catalogue via phone order, please contact Jackie Clay, Manager, Museum Store at 775.329.3333 ex. 106.

This exhibition is originated by the Nevada Museum of Art and curated by Colin M. Robertson, Charles N. Mathewson Curator of Education, Nevada Museum of Art.

Lead sponsors

Louise A. Tarble Foundation, E.L. Cord Foundation and Nancy and Martin Cohen

Major sponsors

Nancy and Brian Kennedy, Susan and Bill Pereira, Reno Orthopaedic Clinic and Volunteers in Art (VIA)

Supporting sponsors

Dickson Realty, Jan and David Hardie, Eleanor and Robert Preger, and RBC Wealth Management

Additional sponsors

Charlotte and Dick McConnell, MINI of Reno and the Mark E Pollack Foundation

In-kind support

The Irvine Company, LAYAR, and Fortyonetwenty

Media sponsor

KNPB Channel 5 Public Broadcasting

Within a Stone’s Throw is a video installation that considers the connections between landscape and the human presence, exploring unconventional perceptions of reality, scale and time. Artist Cecelia Condit transports viewers to Ireland’s Burren Coast, a magical place where megalithic tombs, prehistoric burial mounds, Bronze and Iron Age forts, and medieval castles stud the rocky, wildflower-strewn terrain.

Appearing variously as a girl, young adult, and older woman in the video, the artist as actor surveys the dramatic landscape, her movements and the video’s time/space shifts alluding to the unfolding of human and geologic time.

Maps are not pictures of the land, but rather abstractions we use to understand where we are and how to move across the landscape. Maps can be as complicated and difficult to read as an abstract painting, but because we are surrounded by maps–from printed road maps bought at gas stations to digital ones on our smartphones–we are adept at reading them. Our familiarity with them means that we also sometimes forget that they are amazing objects.

In her ongoing series of mapping projects, Erika Osborne positions people as they gaze at landscapes such as the Grand Canyon. Then she paints lines from maps representing those scenes, or the contours of the land itself, on their skin. When we view Osborne’s photographs, she asks us to think about the differences and similarities between looking at a place, reading a map, and looking at a picture of a place. Osborne also paints maps on people while they are standing in front of large wall-mounted maps that convey different types of information, such as climate change or the spread of destructive insects and fires. She makes clear the connection between people, landscapes, navigational maps, and those maps used to take action in the landscape.

Osborne earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico, where she helped run the Land Arts of the American West program. She now teaches at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where she runs the Art and Environment and Place: Appalachia. By using the body as a canvas upon which to paint maps, Osborne helps us regain appreciation for how maps place us in the landscape. The result is a renewed appreciation for cartography, one of the oldest and most sophisticated graphic technologies invented by humans.

This archive exhibition includes research materials, maps, drawings, photographs, and objects from 2005 through 2010. The archive is in the collection of Nevada Museum of Art, Center for Art + Environment, Gift of Erika Osborne.

Support

John Ben Snow Memorial Trust and Metabolic Studio

Laurie Brown’s panoramic photographs of Las Vegas, Nevada, reveal lush green grass, artificial waterways, and tropical palm trees set against a stark waterless desert landscape. For Brown, who has documented suburban spaces and the altered landscape for more than forty years, these easily overlooked peripheral areas—where vulnerable wilderness meets encroaching suburban sprawl—reveal the all-too-real paradoxes of life in the desert.

Brown’s engaging photographs ask us to consider how far Las Vegans will go to live in a place not intended for living and whether their desires to do so are, in the end, sustainable.

The Nevada Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Andy Warhol: Athletes, a collection of 10 paintings by the iconic artist featuring some of the most celebrated sport stars of the 1970s.

Andy Warhol: Athletes immortalizes 10 athletes in Warhol’s signature style of screen-printing – a project commissioned by his friend and collector Richard Weisman. The exhibition also includes a portrait of Weisman painted by Warhol.

The exhibition exemplifies the changing nature of fame in the twentieth century as sports figures became celebrities in American popular culture. The athletes featured in this series benefitted from newfound celebrity status following the series due to Warhol’s international fame. Featured sport stars include Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Tom Seaver, Rod Gilbert, Jack Nicklaus, Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Willie Shoemaker and Pelé. Each of the paintings measure 40 x 40 inches.

Carmelo Ortiz de Elgea is one of the most well-known painters living and working today in the Basque Country, located on the border of northern Spain and southern France. Ortiz de Elgea rose to prominence in the Basque art world of the 1970s, following the emergence of the Modern art movement, which became a galvanizing force among artists in Spain seeking a progressive alternative to the oppressive regime of General Francisco Franco.

Ortiz de Elgea was a founder of a group of artists known as Orain in the Basque province of Álava. Orain was established with a commitment to supporting aesthetic experimentation as a tool for social change during a period of extreme historical and political upheaval. Ortiz de Elgea’s work from this time combined figurative and abstract qualities; a unique blending that would continue to manifest itself throughout his career.

This exhibition includes paintings from Ortiz de Elgea’s travels to the American West in 2011, specifically northern Nevada and California. The artist was invited to the region by Bill Douglass, a scholar of Basque culture and founder of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. After visiting places like Lake Tahoe, Mount Rose, Virginia City, and Smoke Creek, he then explored the surrounding areas of California, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, and Utah. “I couldn’t imagine the impression such a big open space and the expanse of landscapes of virgin nature would have on me,” Ortiz de Elgea said of his travels. “I immersed myself into the magnificent landscape, revisiting it with my canvas and colors, and painting it without a moment of rest. I would have loved to live there and never leave the immense land where eyes get to see all the way to the horizon without interruption.”

While Ortiz de Elgea’s work has been shown widely in the Basque Country, this is his first exhibition in the United States.

Sponsors

Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency