Water Warriors Book Preview with Michael P. Branch
Join local writer Michael P. Branch for a preview of his upcoming book, Water Warriors. The book focuses on a 1989 proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to pump nearly 3 billion gallons of groundwater a year from 30 rural valleys—and pipe it 300 miles to Las Vegas. The plan would have devastated wildlife and ranching communities, but a scrappy coalition—tribal leaders, ranchers, musicians, hydrologists, teachers, cowboy poets, public interest lawyers, and citizen scientists—banded together to save some of the Great Basin’s most vital water resources.
Reversing Ecological Loss with Walker Basin Conservancy
Through a series of water diversion efforts in the last century to grow the agriculture industry in Nevada, Walker Lake has shrunk to a fraction of its former size. While it formerly had half the surface area of Lake Tahoe, it now only has a quarter. Join this conversation between Walker Basin Conservancy Executive Director Peter Stanton and University of Nevada Professor Sudeep Chandra about current efforts to support transparent water transactions, ecological conservation, native plants and recreation.
This is part of a series featuring?local conservation and sustainability organizations, which complements?Into the Time Horizon.
Artist Talk: Questioning Conventions and Reframing Ideas about Nature with Mark Dion
Artist Mark Dion leads a conversation about his interdisciplinary practice and the ways he borrows from scientific methods to explore how we collect, interpret, and display the natural world. By examining how knowledge about nature is constructed, Dion challenges the objectivity and authoritative role of science in contemporary society, and shows how pseudo-science, social agendas and ideology creep into public discourse and knowledge production.
Dion’s work, Cabinet of Extinction is on view in The Sixth Extinction section of Into the Time Horizon.
OLLI Art at the Museum: Exhibition Tour
As Into the Time Horizon prepares to close, our trained Museum docents lead an interactive conversation in the galleries about the artworks from around the world that illustrate possibilities for a better collective future.
This program is presented in partnership with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and is hosted every third Wednesday of the month. Support for the 2026 series provided by CJ Christenson.
Through an Artist’s Eyes: Biodiversity with Isabella Kirkland
Artist Isabella Kirkland creates works that bridge fine art and taxonomy, capturing the vibrant complexity of the natural world with hyper-realistic precision. Her meticulously researched compositions are both a joyful celebration of biodiversity and a scientifically rigorous visual archive. Meet the artist and learn about her detailed process in this special artist talk. Her work, Nova: Forest Floor, is part of the Interspecies Relationships section of Into the Time Horizon.
Artist Talk: Intersections in the Everyday Landscape with Rodney McMillian
Join artist Rodney McMillian for a conversation about the histories, experiences, and systems that shape everyday life. Through painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, McMillian explores the intersections of power, race, class, and culture in America. His recent landscape paintings are portals to imagined realms, with skies, stars, and foliage floating between worlds. His works invite both escape and confrontation, offering glimpses of fantastical possibilities elsewhere.
McMillian’s work Untitled (Orange Hills) is in the Nevada Museum of Art permanent collection and is currently on view in the Strange Weather section of Into the Time Horizon.
OLLI at the Museum: Connecting Nevada Wildflowers with Northern Paiute Language Traditions
Examine how native Nevada wildflowers connect to the Northern Paiute language traditions that first named them. Melissa Melero-Moose shares how her curatorial work for Of the Earth: Contemporary Native American Baskets and Pueblo Pottery coincides with her work to promote Great Basin Native Artists and preserve cultural knowledge in danger of being lost.
This program is presented in partnership with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and is hosted every third Wednesday of the month. Support for the 2026 series is provided by CJ Christenson.
Enduring Tradition and a Lifetime of Innovation with Gerald Clarke
Visual artist, educator, tribal leader, and cultural practitioner Gerald Clarke discusses his wide range of work–from sculpture and installation to branded prints and performance. An enrolled citizen of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, Clarke lives in the Anza Valley where his family has lived for time immemorial. He describes his work as conceptual and united by a spirit of perseverance and adaptation, expressing his perspective as a Cahuilla person and 21st century citizen of the world. He is a Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California Riverside where he teaches classes on Native American art, history, and culture.
Clarke’s sculpture Continuum Basket is currently on view in Of the Earth: Native American Baskets and Pueblo Pottery and is in the permanent collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.
Coral Across Time
Dr. Montana Hodges takes us on a journey into deep time to explore the coral fossil record. With their hard exoskeleton and firm attachment to the ocean floor, excellent coral fossils are discovered throughout Nevada. They tell the story of past climates on earth, including the extreme conditions that coincided with the Triassic- Jurassic Extinction and can even teach us about the environment today.
After the talk, visit Katie Grinnan’s artwork Ginger Coral and Julian Charrière’s photolithograph created from dead coral Veils/Theonella Swinhoe in the current exhibition Into the Time Horizon.
Work in Progress: Odili Donald Odita in Conversation with Torkwase Dyson
Explore the abstract, colorful, large-scale murals of Odili Donald Odita, a Joyner/Giuffrida Artist in Residence, in this dynamic conversation with artist Torkwase Dyson. Drawing on Africanist approaches to pattern and international political contexts that position color as a form of communication, their dialogue will journey through their practices and coalesce in the Odita’s current work.