This collaborative wall project by Tadáskía (b. 1993) and Ana Cláudia Almeida (b. 1993) explores the spiritual dimensions of visual forms through hybrid approaches to painting and drawing. Tadáskía’s graphic tangles of colors and lines incite us to accompany the winding forms as if following a path of a traveler who mediates a familiar earthly world and a far-off mystical space. Through prints, paintings and drawings, Almeida creates movements on fabric and paper that record reflections on religion, nature and sexuality, and the constant mutability that underlies life and artistic making. Both artists emphasize change, in their material processes—through the transference of gestures across different supports—and in the transitive, ever-shifting images. Though abstract, their work sparks associations with otherworldly landscapes and trance-like visions. As a sort of ritual enactment of their processes coming together, Tadáskía and Almeida render a panoramic tableau sprawling along the wall in the Museum’s Theater Gallery.

Tadáskía and Ana Cláudia Almeida both live and work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tadáskía’s first solo exhibition in a museum in the United States is currently on view at MoMA, New York until October 14, 2024. Her work was featured in the 35th São Paulo Biennial, choreographies of the impossible (2023), with a large-scale installation featuring her wall drawings and sculpture. Ana Cláudia Almeida is currently an MFA candidate in painting and printmaking at Yale University. She has had solo exhibitions at the galleries Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel and Quadra in Brazil. This is her first project in a US museum.

SPONSORS
Pamela Joyner and Fred Giuffrida

Join us for a screening of the film Putuparri and the Rainmakers, a universal story about the sacred relationship between people and place. It takes audiences on a rare and emotional journey to meet the traditional rainmakers of Australia’s Great Sandy Desert who have fought a twenty-year battle to win back their traditional homeland.

The film spans ten transformative years in the life of Tom ‘Putuparri’ Lawford as he navigates the deep chasm between his Western upbringing and his growing determination to fight for his family’s homeland. A trip back to his grandparents’ country in the desert begins the process of cultural awakening. Putuparri is shocked to learn that the dreamtime myths are not just stories, that there is a country called Kurtal and a snake spirit that is the subject of an elaborate rainmaking ritual.

Putuparri is a man caught between two worlds: the deeply spiritual universe of his people’s traditional culture and his life in modern society where he struggles with alcoholism and domestic violence. As he reconnects with his ancestral lands and learns about his traditional culture he begins to accept his future as a leader of his people and shoulders his responsibility to pass this knowledge on to the next generation.

Set against the backdrop of their long fight to reclaim their traditional lands, Putuparri and the Rainmakers is an emotional, visually breathtaking story of love, hope and the survival of Aboriginal law and culture against all odds.

When Langston Hughes Came to Town explores the history and legacy of Langston Hughes through the lens of his largely unknown travels to Nevada and highlights the vital role Hughes played in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes studied at Columbia University in 1921 for one year and would eventually become one of leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance. A writer with a distinctive style inspired by jazz rhythms, Hughes documented all facets of Black culture but became renowned for his incisive poetry.

The exhibition begins by examining the relationship of this literary giant to the state of Nevada through a unique presentation of archival photographs, ephemera, and short stories he wrote that were informed by his visit to the area. The writer’s first trip to Nevada took place in 1932, when he investigated the working conditions at the Hoover Dam Project. He returned to the state in 1934, at the height of his career, making an unexpected trip to Reno, and found solace and a great night life in the city.

The presentation continues with work created by leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance who had close ties to Hughes, including sculptures by Augusta Savage and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, and paintings by Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Norman Lewis, and Archibald Motley, Jr., among others. The range of work on display foregrounds the rich expressions of dance, music, and fashion prevalent during the influential movement.

The final section of the exhibition features contemporary artists who were inspired by Hughes and made work about his life. Excerpts from Hughes’s poems and short stories are juxtaposed with related works of art, demonstrating how his legacy endures in the twenty-first century. Isaac Julien, Kwame Brathwaite, Glenn Ligon, and Deborah Willis are among the artists whose works are included. Julien, for example, in his renowned series Looking for Langston Hughes reimagines scenarios of Hughes’s life in Harlem during the 1920s. His black-and-white pictures are paired with Hughes poem No Regrets. Similarly, Brathwaite’s impactful photographs highlight the continuation of the Harlem Renaissance through the Black pride movement of the 1960s and are coupled with the poem My People. Finally, Glenn Ligon’s black neon sculpture relates to Hughes’s poignant poem Let America Be America Again, which both leave viewers to ponder the question of belonging in America.

This special exhibition features highlights from the personal collection of Judith Lowry, an accomplished Native American artist and enrolled member of the Pit River Tribe, who recently donated over 125 artworks to the Nevada Museum of Art.

Assembled over many decades by Lowry and her husband Brad Croul, the Lowry Croul Collection of Contemporary Native American Art includes paintings by prominent Native American contemporary artists with a West Coast and Great Basin focus.

The collection contains works by some of the West Coast’s most noted Native American artists, including paintings by Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/Hawaiian/Portuguese), Frank LaPena (Nomptipon Wintu), and Frank Day (Konkow Maidu). Important and rare story paintings by Dalbert Castro (Maidu) are also included, along with works by Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Pit River) and George Longfish (Seneca and Tuscarora). An exceptional selection of photography by Lowry’s cousin Dugan Agular (Northern Paiute/Maidu/Pit River) is included, as well as many traditional beaded and woven works by Lorena Gorbet (Mountain Maidu), Shiwaya Peck (Maidu), and Tiffany Adams (Chemehuevi/Koyoomk’awi/Nisenan).

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with The Art of Judith Lowry.

In her large-scale and colorful paintings, Judith Lowry (born 1948) chronicles the stories of her family and the legends, traditions, and complexities of her Indigenous ancestry. Born to a Euro-Australian mother, and a father who traced his roots to Hammawi Band Pit River/Mountain Maidu/Washoe/Scots-Irish cultures, Lowry’s works reflect the Maidu/Pit River creation stories her father shared. She considers her paintings a modern extension of storytelling and a way of recording the oral histories of her family and community.

This retrospective exhibition features Lowry’s paintings alongside a concurrent exhibition featuring highlights from Lowry’s personal art collection that she recently donated to the Nevada Museum of Art. The conversations that unfold in Lowry’s paintings and the work of her friends and colleagues represent a lifetime of dialogue about ideas and issues that have shaped her life.

Lowry earned her B.A. in fine art from Humboldt State University, followed by an M.A. in painting and drawing from Chico State University. A resident of both Nevada City and Susanville, CA, and is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Pit River Tribe.

Lowry’s work has been exhibited widely and her paintings are included in the permanent collections of major museums including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; the Peabody Essex Museum; the Crocker Art Museum; the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, the Denver Art Museum, and the Nevada Museum of Art.

Swell transports visitors to a different time and place. Inside a darkened gallery, beams of light intersect with a hazy mist to create a mesmerizing interplay of light and shadow. For some visitors, Swell evokes the experience of slowly floating across an ocean current or soaring through an expansive galaxy beyond our universe.

Anthony McCall (born 1940) is a British-born artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations that he began in 1973. In 2024, McCall has solo museum exhibitions on view at the Tate Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Lisbon, Portugal. Swell was commissioned by the Nevada Museum of Art for its permanent collection in 2017.

This presentation of Swell is presented in conjunction with the exhibition: Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada.

Long before humans walked the Earth, Nevada was submerged beneath the waters of an ancient sea. Explore this underwater realm and meet the giant sea creatures—also known as ichthyosaurs—that called it home. These marine reptiles lived 250 million years ago and this exhibition, Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada, debuts many of Nevada’s spectacular, but never-before-seen fossils.

Dive into Nevada’s prehistoric past through the display of original fossils, including a 33-foot specimen. Hear stories of Nevada’s early and present-day paleontologists and fossil hunters, including John C. Merriam, Annie Alexander, Charles Camp, and Martin Sander. And learn how Nevada’s extinct underwater animals connect us to a larger global community of scientific discovery.

Through a unique blend of paleontology, art, history, and design, this groundbreaking exhibition explores the rise and fall of these ancient sea creatures, revealing how an understanding of the prehistoric past and evolutionary change over time may in fact help us to anticipate our own future.

Highlights of the exhibition include: recently discovered fossils from the newest ichthyosaur species, Cymbospondylus youngorum, excavated in the Augusta Mountains of Nevada; fossils, photographs and field journal pages from the 1905 Saurian expedition to Nevada’s Humboldt Range; fossils excavated from the quarry known today as Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Historic Park; the story of fossil hunter Mary Anning, the first woman to discover an ichthyosaur fossil in Great Britain in 1811; striking examples of paleoart, revealing how artists and scientists have long worked together to imagine the world’s prehistoric marine creatures; and one of the nation’s largest collections of vintage prehistoric animal toys amassed by Jack Arata after visiting the ichthyosaur fossils in Berlin, Nevada as a young boy in the 1950s.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new children’s book celebrating women in science by honoring the achievements of Annie Alexander. Annie Alexander’s Amazing Adventure: An American Fossil Expedition in Nevada is written by Ann M. Wolfe with illustrations by Nevada-based artist Kate O’Hara. Through brilliant and colorful illustrations, readers learn about the plants and animals of the desert environment, ichthyosaur fossil discoveries and excavation, and extinction and climate science.

Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada is a 9,000-square-foot exhibition co-curated by Ann M. Wolfe, the Museum’s Andrea and John C. Deane Family Chief Curator, along with lead paleontologist Dr. Martin Sander, Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at University of Bonn, Germany. The exhibition is designed by Nik Hafermaas based in Berlin, Germany.

Lead Sponsors
Anonymous
Margaret and Charles Burback
Barbara and Tad Danz
Nevada Division of Museums and History
Reno Orthopedic Center
Elizabeth and Henry Thumann
Wayne L. Prim Foundation

Major Sponsors
The Bretzlaff Foundation
Kathryn A. Hall and Laurel Trust Company
Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller
Linda and Alvaro Pascotto
Volunteers in Art of the Nevada Museum of Art

Sponsors
Carole Anderson
Betsy Burgess and Tim Bailey
John Cunha
The Deborah and T.J. Day Foundation
Estelle J. Kelsey Foundation
Debra Marko and Bill Franklin
Yvonne L. Murphy, PhD
Nevada Arts Council | National Endowment for the Arts
Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority
Robert Z. Hawkins Foundation
Sandy Raffealli
Whittier Trust
Tom and Bonda Young

Supporting Sponsors
Gail and Robert Aldrich
Chica Charitable Trust
Tammy and Michael Dermody
Viki Matica and Doug Brewer
Charlotte and Dick McConnell

Additional Support
Brian Kendig
Bureau of Land Management
Nancy and Alan Maiss
Nevada Mining Association

This exhibition takes its inspiration from the video, We Were Lost in Our Country (2019) by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, now in the Nevada Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Nguyen’s powerful, moving-image work tells the remarkable story of the Ngurrara Canvas II (1997), which was made by a group of forty men and four women from the Walmajarri, Wangkatjunga, Mangala and Juwaliny communities and language groups. They all convened at the Pirnini outstation in the Great Sandy Desert in the Kimberley region of Australia to discuss making a Native Title Claim to the Australian government. In order to do this, the community members and Elders made a consequential decision: they would create a painting together that proved that they were the actual owners and original inhabitants of the land. To the Ngurrara people the monumental painting is a map, made from memory, of a place where their ancestors lived for over 65,000 years. It represents the direct connection to their land and the knowledge passed down for countless generations about what they refer to as Country. Fortunately, their claim was successful and thus, their achievement and legacy provides a remarkable model for the understanding of land rights, culture, and identity. In the words of Nguyen, “We Were Lost in Our Country explores questions of personal agency, inherited trauma, and intergenerational transmission, through a conversation among ancestors and descendants.” Importantly, Nguyen conveys the story through his interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, so that they chronicle their own history and relationship with the land.

In the exhibition, the video is paired with a selection of paintings by artists from the Great Sandy Desert (also known as the Western Desert), some of whom were involved in painting the Ngurarra Canvas II, such as Jimmy Pike, Ngirlpirr Spider Snell, Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah, and Tommy May Ngarralja. Most of the works are recent gifts from Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan, and Dennis and Debra Scholl, and now are part of the Museum’s Robert S. And Dorothy J. Keyser Art of the Greater West Collection. In 2012, the Museum defined the Greater West as a “super region,” which broadens conventional definitions of the West by expanding the scope of the collection’s geographic emphasis to encompass a region generally bounded from Alaska to Patagonia and from Australia to the United States intermountain West. This is a geography of frontiers characterized by large expanses of open land, enormous natural resources, diverse Indigenous peoples, colonization, and the conflicts that inevitably arise when all four of those factors exist in the same place at the same time.

Sponsor
Roswitha Kima Smale, PhD

Additional Support
Martha Hesse Dolan and Robert E. Dolan
Linda Frye

Old Haunts, Lower Reaches is an exhibition of new work by Nick Larsen (b. 1982) that excavates history, possibility, identity, and place. Comprised of layered collage pieces, textile-based architectural models, and image projection, Larsen explores what is present and visible in the desert landscape and, perhaps more importantly, what isn’t.

Influenced heavily by the artist’s experience working for an archaeological firm focused on the Great Basin region, research for Old Haunts, Lower Reaches began when Larsen discovered a fading layer in the history of the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada. Rhyolite (located thirty miles from Death Valley National Park) served, at one point, as the proposed site for a planned queer community, Stonewall Park, envisioned by two men from Reno in the 1980s. Contextualized by the history of Rhyolite, Stonewall Park, and his own life, Larsen speculates pasts, presents, and futures for this desert locale.

In the words of the artist, “The desert is an environment defined by what it lacks, its bleakness an invitation to project possibilities for both what could have been and what might be on what is often perceived as empty.” Repurposing materials to create his layered collages and sculptures, Larsen’s speculative practice also serves as a kind of “making do,” using what is at hand to give form to an invisible history or an unattainable future.

Nick Larsen was raised in Northern Nevada and currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.