Due to construction, Museum parking may be limited at the time of your visit. Look for additional parking in free or metered spaces along nearby streets.

Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity

The first retrospective exhibition of one of midcentury America’s most innovative artists to occur in nearly sixty years, Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity features approximately 120 works that span Adaline Kent’s (1900-1957) entire career and chart major thematic developments in the artist’s work as it progressed from figuration to abstraction. Encompassing a diverse range of media, the exhibition includes drawings, original pictures incised on Hydrocal (a type of plaster), sculptures both large and small, and a collection of terracottas—many of which have not been seen by the public in over half a century.

The exhibition title comes from the artist herself; Kent often wrote down many of her ideas on art, filling notebooks with her thoughts. In one poetic note entitled Classic Romantic Mystic, dated April 17, 1956, Kent mused, “I want to hear the click of authenticity.” The exhibition title underscores the drive that propelled her forward in her work and life: to create art that expressed a unique approach to timeless subjects.

Kent grew up in the shadow of Mt. Tampalais, and therefore with a love of the natural world that she shared with her husband Robert B. Howard. They often spent their summers exploring the High Sierra. Kent and Howard also spent winters skiing in the Tahoe region, often staying with close friend and fellow artist Jeanne Reynal, who had a house at nearby Soda Springs. They were among the first investors of Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, and Kent’s brother-in-law, Henry Temple Howard, would design the first chairlift in California. Kent was a self-admitted “addict of the High Sierra,” and the landscape infused her work as she translated her experience of time and space in the mountains into aesthetic form.

Although Kent’s work is not widely known today, she was featured in key 1940s and 1950s exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Bienal de São Paulo, and she exhibited with the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. She was a peer of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Isamu Noguchi, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. Kent was also a member of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most productive mid-century artistic clan, which included Charles H. Howard, Madge Knight, John Langley Howard, Robert Boardman Howard, Henry Temple Howard, and Jane Berlandina.

Major Sponsors

Jenny and Garrett Zook Sutton | Corporate Direct

Sponsors

Charles and Margaret Burback Foundation
Barbara and Tad Danz
Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller
Linda and Alvaro Pascotto
Six Talents Foundation
Roswitha Kima Smale, PhD
Kaya and Kevin Stanley

Supporting Sponsors

Carole Anderson
Kathie Bartlett
Betsy Burgess and Tim Bailey
Chica Charitable Trust
Evercore Wealth Management
Galen Howard Hilgard

Additional Support

KQED
Pamela Joyner and Fred Giuffrida
PBS Reno

Harry Fonseca: Stone Poem #4

This spotlight exhibition highlights a single painting by Harry Fonseca. Stone Poem #4 was recently acquired for the Dorothy S. and Robert J. Keyser Greater West Collection at the Nevada Museum of Art. In addition to the painting, the Center for Art + Environment acquired a gift of significant archive materials related to the artist’s research, design, and creation of the Stone Poem series.

Harry Fonseca (1946-2006) was born in Sacramento, California, and is of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portuguese ancestry. In the late 1980s, he began a major series of paintings called the Stone Poems. The series was inspired by his visits to rock art sites in the Coso Range of the Eastern Sierra and Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Stone Poem #4 evokes figural images similar to those found in the Great Gallery, a prehistoric rock art site located in Horseshoe Canyon in Utah.

In 1995, Fonseca traveled to New Zealand for a cultural exchange and symposium with Indigenous artists from the Pacific Rim and Pacific Islands. During this trip, he befriended Aboriginal painter Judy Watson and collaborated on new works with her. It is possible to draw comparisons between the paintings of Fonseca and other contemporary Aboriginal Australian painters.

John Yoyogi Fortes: An Eyeful of Nothing A Brain Full of Everything

This spotlight exhibition highlights a single painting by John Yoyogi Fortes. Drawing from multiple sources including Filipino culture, comics, pop culture, and art history, Fortes layers symbols, marks, and text into his multi-dimensional works, including this mixed media from the permanent collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.

Edi Rama: WORK

WORK is an exhibition by the artist and Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama. This is his first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The exhibition includes a series of new drawings made on documents and notes that Rama creates during meetings and phone calls, as well as ceramic sculptures and a floor-to-ceiling wallpaper that emulates the wallpaper in his office at the Ministry in Tirana. His drawing practice has developed in close parallel with his career as a politician. Rama views art as an essential element in a functional society. A clear example is his initiative to paint the facades of decaying communist bloc buildings after being elected Mayor of Tirana in 2000, an undertaking Rama has described as “a political action, with colors.”The Exhibition WORK has traveled from Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany and has been adapted to the exhibition space of the Nevada Museum of Art.

Edi Rama lives and works in Tirana. A former professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and author of several books, his works have been exhibited in numerous solo, two-person, or group exhibitions including at the Venice Biennale (2017); São Paulo Biennial (1994); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2004); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010); the Musée D’art contemporain de Montréal (2011); Biennale of Marrakesh, Morocco (2015); The New Museum, New York (2016); and Kunsthalle Rostock (2019). Edi Rama began his political career in Albania as the Minister of Culture in 1998. He was the Mayor of Tirana from 2000-2011. Rama was elected Prime Minister of Albania in September 2013, following a landslide victory in the general elections, and his government has since embarked the path of reforms that aim to bring Albania closer to the European Union. He is currently serving his second term as Prime Minister.

A new publication, also entitled WORK, has been published by Hatje Cantz and produced by carlier | gebauer, the Nevada Museum of Art, and Kunsthalle Rostock to accompany the exhibition. WORK is the first publication to present Edi Rama’s drawings, ceramic sculptures, and wallpaper and features texts by Martin Herbert, Ornela Vorpsi and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

Zhi Lin: Chinese Railroad Workers of the Sierra Nevada

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, the Nevada Museum of Art presents an exhibition featuring the art of Zhi Lin, who has spent much of his career making artworks that recall the sacrifices of Chinese migrant workers in the Sierra Nevada. The completion of the railroad—which linked the United States from east to west—is often celebrated as the grand achievement of America’s Manifest Destiny and the 19th-century rallying cry for westward expansion of the United States. Zhi Lin’s mixed-media canvases, video installation, and watercolor paintings honor the nearly 1,200 Chinese workers who lost their lives to accidents, avalanches, and explosions in treacherous Sierra terrain near Donner Summit. While names of most railroad workers have been lost to history, Zhi Lin is part of a growing group of artists and scholars working to weave their stories into America’s broader historical narrative.

Media Sponsor
KUNR Reno Public Radio

Paul Valadez: Selections from the Great Mexican-American Songbook

Using vintage sheet music of the “Great American Song Book” as his backdrop, Paul Valadez re-envisions the idea of the songbook, integrating nostalgic images with “Spanglish” text, resulting in a dichotomy of oblique visual ideas that are equal parts humor and social commentary. Valadez uses metal, acrylics, text, and mixed media to create a concept of “old signage,” with subtle hints of race, culture and history. His current work is autobiographical with semi-satirical social commentary inspired by his childhood memories of growing up in a bi-cultural household.

These works are drawn from the Nevada Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

Celebrating Israel’s 70th Anniversary: Michal Rovner and Tal Shochat

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.

Download the press release.

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

Tamara Kostianovsky: After Goya

Responding to the tradition of still-life painting, Kostianovsky creates a three-dimensional sculptural representation of the butcher shop scene in Francisco de Goya’s 1808 painting “Bodegón con costillas y cabeza de cordero.” The sculpture, made of recycled clothing, creates a dialogue about issues related to food, bounty, and excess.

 

Gregory Euclide: Nature Out There

Gregory Euclide’s intricately crafted sculptural works explore the tension between idealized, picturesque views of landscapes and actual experiences of being in nature. Using traditional methods of landscape painting combined with natural materials and found objects, Euclide constructs three dimensional encapsulated worlds where pristine notions of landscape meet the reality of our current environment.

Bovey Lee: Undercurrents

Bovey Lee’s meticulously crafted paper-cut drawings explore the struggle between nature, urbanization, and the ownership of natural resources. Lee’s drawings are rooted in her study of Chinese calligraphy and pencil drawing, mediums in which she was immersed while growing up in Hong Kong.

Lee begins by sketching out her ideas by hand. She then devises a digital template made up of photographs, downloaded images, scans from magazines and books, and vector graphics. After her template is in place, she hand cuts the image with a knife onto a single sheet of Chinese rice paper.

The often airy and fragile, lace-like structures she creates contrast sharply with the themes of power, sacrifice, and survival underlying her work.

“Cutting paper is a visceral reaction and natural response to my affection for immediacy, detail, and subtlety,” Lee explains. “The physical demand from cutting is extreme and thrilling, slows me down and allows me to think clearly and decisively.”