When we protect our forests, we protect life. Healthy, resilient forests along the Truckee River reduce wildfire risk, safeguard water quality, and preserve the beauty and biodiversity that define Northern Nevada. 

Learn how the Nevada Chapter of The Nature Conservancy is working to improve forest health – before catastrophic wildfires occur – by restoring the natural role of fire, strengthening forest ecosystems, enhancing community safety, and honoring Indigenous knowledge. 

This is part of an Art Bite series featuring local conservation and sustainability organizations, which complements Into the Time Horizon.  

Michael P. Cohen will talk about what he discovered about human responses to Great Basin Bristlecone Pines when he wrote his important book A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change. He explores the relationship between humans and these iconic trees, how through scientific study (mostly dendrochronology), they shed light on human and climate history, and motivated cultural stories and artistic representations. He will explore some of these as personal stories, motivations, and controversies surrounding those who studied them and others who made them into cultural icons. These trees have become a lens to examine modern humanity’s interaction with nature. 

Join us for a screening of the films Petyarre and Atnangkere, two related short films both depicting the search by the artist Gloria Petyarre and her family for a cave that has great significance in the culture of her people. The filmmaker Viviana Petyarre, an Alyawarre filmmaker, shares personal and cultural stories connected to her family and their land. These short documentaries give a heartfelt look into the strength of family, culture, and connection to the land in Aboriginal Australia. 

Embark on a journey through Australia’s cultural landscape with two poignant documentaries that illuminate Indigenous perspectives on art, history, and identity. Mr. Patterns chronicles the transformative impact of Geoff Bardon, an art teacher who, in the early 1970s, introduced Western desert Aboriginal communities to the medium of dot painting. Working alongside the Papunya artists, Bardon facilitated the resurgence of traditional designs, intertwining cultural expression with economic independence. In Too Many Captain Cooks, Rembarrnga elder Paddy Fordham Wainburranga offers a critical retelling of Captain James Cook’s arrival from an Aboriginal perspective.

Mr. Patterns generously provided by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Too Many Captain Cooks generously provided by Ronin Films

Join Desert Research Institute Associate Research Scientist  and Scientific Illustrator, Tiffany Pereira as she explores the union of art and science. Learn how she incorporates artistic principles into her research in Nevada and the Desert Southwest. 

Mary Anning was a pioneering paleontologist and fossil collector, yet little is known about her life. Anning’s history is incomplete and contradictory, her lifetime was a constellation of firsts. Join us for a discussion with Megan Bellister, Nell J. Redfield Curator of Learning and Engagement, as she places Mary Anning in historical and cultural context through the fashions of the time.

Denise Dutton, Statue of Mary Anning, 2022

Using camera lenses made of glacier ice, artist Tristan Duke explores our current moment of climate crisis. As Peter E. Pool Fellow at the Nevada Museum of Art’s Center for Art + Environment, the artist used his ice-lens camera to document the rapidly melting glaciers of the Sierra Nevada. Join us for a talk concluding his fellowship, and a preview of his book “Glacial Optics” forthcoming from Radius Books. 

When Langston Hughes visited Reno in 1934, the city had just a few hundred Black residents. The Black community had been growing steadily for six decades, as they established homes and businesses and built enduring social and religious institutions in the face of mounting racial prejudice and discrimination. Historian Alicia Barber will share new research about the Black community of 1930s Reno, made possible by a National Park Service Underrepresented Communities Grant received by the City of Reno in 2024.

Dr. Alicia Barber is a professional historian, author, and recognized authority on the cultural history and built environment of Reno and the state of Nevada. She researched the Northern Nevadan designs of African American architect Paul Revere Williams for the Nevada Museum of Art’s 2022 exhibit, Janna Ireland on the Architectural Legacy of Paul Revere Williams in Nevada. In collaboration with the nonprofit organization Our Story, Inc., she has intensively researched the history of Black Springs, a traditionally African American neighborhood north of Reno founded in the late 1940s. She is the co-founder and editor of the website and smart phone app Reno Historical and the author of Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City and The Barber Brief, a weekly e-newsletter about urban development in Reno.

Photo courtesy of the Nevada Historical Society