The period when Georgia O’Keeffe crafted her signature style of dress was also one of great development and change in American fashion at large. Against the background of war in Europe, a worldwide Depression, and the rise of Hollywood, America’s nascent fashion design industry sought to develop a distinctly American style to break free from the perceived dominance of French fashion.  This talk will look at the elements and sources of O’Keeffe’s signature wardrobe and locate them within the larger story of American fashion of her era.

Melissa Leventon, a founding partner of Curatrix Group museum consultants, is a specialist in European and American fashion and textiles.  Formerly Curator-in-Charge of Textiles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco she has organized exhibitions involving art media ranging from contemporary glass to the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Melissa has been a consultant to museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, The Textile Museum, and the Chicago History Museum. Since 2006 she has also served as a senior consultant to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok.  

Melissa has authored or contributed to numerous publications and was recently featured as an on-screen expert in the “California” episode of PBS’s Craft in America series.  In addition to her curatorial and appraisal work, Melissa teaches fashion history and theory at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

The Art Bite series is supported by Nevada Humanities.

Join artist Galen Brown and Curator of Contemporary Art, JoAnne Northrup  in the gallery for an informal conversation regarding Sine Cere. Take this special opportunity to meet and engage with the artist in this retrospective exhibition.

The Art Bite series is supported by Nevada Humanities.

Join us for a gallery conversation in “Without You I Am Nothing” as guest curator Alberto Rodríguez Garcia shares his perspectives about selections from the Museum’s permanent collection dealing with labor and class.

The Art Bite series is supported by Nevada Humanities.

Textile artist Toni Lowden uses fibers to explore color, texture and pattern in her large-scale weavings. Join us for a discussion about the use of textiles to communicate a narrative. 

The Art Bite lecture series is sponsors by Nevada Arts Council and Nevada Humanities 

“The center of the Wašiw (Washoe) world is Da’aw (Lake Tahoe) both geographically and spiritually. Like most native peoples our lifestyles revolved around the environment; the people were part of the environment, and everything was provided by the environment.” 

Join Washoe Tribal Council member, Helen Fillmore as she explores the history and geology of the West Shore through the Washoe oral history combined with modern geological discoveries.

About Helen Fillmore

Helen Fillmore is a research assistant in cooperative extension as she works towards her masters in Hydrology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Helen received her bachelor’s in environmental science and terrestrial resource management at the University of Washington. Helen was a wildland firefighter with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and with the Bureau of Land Management.

Helen currently sits on the tribal council for the Washoe Tribe as an off-reservation representative and is one of just a handful of remaining speakers of the Washu language. In 2017 Helen published an article titled “Using the Washoe Language to Inform Hydrologic and Environmental Models.” Today Helen joins us to share information about West Shore of Lake Tahoe combining Washoe oral history with modern geological discoveries.

The central theme of artist Michelle Lassaline’s work can be described by the Portuguese word saudade, which roughly translates to “homesickness,” but also carries the meaning of invented memories. For example, you may feel saudade for your childhood home, a place much grander in your memory than the building that now sits at the same address. Saudade is the homesickness for somewhere that never existed except in the form of that fleeting land called childhood. Learn about these ideas of place and their relation to this emerging artist’s work. 

Artist Erika Harrsch discusses the intersections between art and public engagement in her work on display in the museum and the pop-up art performances happening throughout the community.

Robert Adams’ photographs of the American landscape became some of the most famous of the twentieth century. Join photographer Scott Hinton for a gallery discussion of Adams’ most recent body of work, a portfolio of images made in Oregon’s Nehalem Bay State Park.

The Nature Conservancy in Nevada has been working with artists Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien to restore the channels of the Carson and Truckee River systems with living sculptures. Learn about the scope and purpose of these projects form leaders of The Nature Conservancy.

North American wildlife conservation is unique in the world. In the U.S., wildlife belongs to the public and is managed by the state and federal government in the public trust, based on a model of conservation largely established and funded by hunters. Learn about this conservation history in the context of the exhibition Late Harvest.