Join Martin Sander, one of the world’s leading ichthyosaur paleontologists from Bonn, Germany, as he details his 30-year odyssey excavating fossils in Nevada’s Augusta Mountains. Hear his stories of mountaineering for fossils, digging out tons of pounds of ichthyosaur bones, and transporting them to the laboratory via helicopter and in a beer truck. Learn what Sander’s study of these giant animals teaches us about evolution, life on earth, and Nevada’s place in the global scientific community.

Martin Sander divides his research between excavating sea reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs in Nevada and elsewhere around the globe and understanding dinosaurs as living animals. These interests converge on understanding the evolution of giants in the ocean and on land.

*Registration includes access to the Summer Block Party beginning at 4pm!

***Parking is limited. Please allow ample time to find parking. Overflow parking is available at the Washoe County public lot off Court Street. ***

Join us to explore Seven Magic Mountains in virtual reality with Luka Starmer. The University Nevada Reno Libraries and the Nevada Museum of Art have teamed up to create an immersive virtual reality experience of Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains. This project allows viewers to virtually explore the vibrant sculptures in their actual form and scale, while experiencing the landscape and the people who visit it, all without ever leaving Northern Nevada. Beyond bringing the piece into the virtual reality, this project serves as a valuable archival tool, digitally preserving this captivating work of art in perpetuity, ensuring wider access, and fostering a deeper understanding of the iconic piece. The VR experience will be available in the E.L. Cord Museum School during regular hours. 

With offices in Denver, Phoenix, and Spokane, Dig Studio is a landscape architecture, planning, and urban design firm. They are currently working with the City of Reno on The Truckee River Vision Plan. Learn from Dig Studio leaders about their practice and their approach to creating The Truckee River Vision Plan and implementation of recommended projects.  

*Doors open at 5 pm for networking hour with hosted beer. Program begins at 6 pm. 

Join the Museum and the University of Nevada, Reno College of Liberal Arts and Core Humanities Program for “Thought On Tap,” the collaborative public engagement series. In this episode, the Museum and University faculty will discuss plans and opportunities for collaborative education and research in the new Charles and Stacie Mathewson Education and Research Center. 

During the late summer of 1927, Maynard Dixon headed for Nevada’s northwest corner, initially planning only a two-week excursion, but the trip turned into four extraordinarily productive months. Join author and poet Carolyn Dufurrena, of Nevada’s Quinn River Ranch, as she re-traces Dixon’s 1927 journey with stops along the way at Onion Valley, Alder Creek Ranch, and Rainbow Ridge.

Dr. Mark Sublette, owner of the Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, AZ, is an authority on the life work of western illustrator and artist Maynard Dixon. Join Sublette for a talk that provides an overview of Dixon’s life and work in the American West.

** Due to a rise in COVID cases, Dr. Sublette will not present in person. This lecture will now be pre-recorded with a live Q+A. **

Maynard Dixon’s longtime friend and patron Anita Baldwin hosted the artist and his photographer-wife Dorothea Lange, and their twin-boys, at her 2,000-acre estate at Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe in 1932. Anita was the daughter of E. J. “Lucky” Baldwin, who made his fortune on the Comstock Lode in the 1870s. Join Marilyn Long, a longtime volunteer at the Lake Tahoe Historical Society and Tallac Historic Site, as she shares photographs and stories of Anita Baldwin and her Fallen Leaf Lake estate. 

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Nevada Poet Laureate Emerita Gailmarie Pahmeier, longtime Nevada poet Shaun Griffin, and UNR professor and poet-scholar Ann Keniston for a reading and conversation about the challenges and rewards of writing about the U.S. West in the context of Maynard Dixon’s seldom-discussed landscape poems. 

About the Poets: 

Shaun T. Griffin co-founded and directed Community Chest, a rural social justice agency for twenty-seven years.  His new book of poems, No Charity in the Wilderness, is forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press in 2024.  Southern Utah University Press released Anthem for a Burnished Land, a memoir, in 2016.  For thirty years he taught a poetry workshop at Northern Nevada Correctional Center.  

Ann Keniston is a poet, essayist, and critic interested in the relation of the creative to the scholarly. She is the author of several poetry collections, including, most recently, Somatic (Terrapin 2020), as well as several scholarly studies of contemporary American poetry, including most recently Economies of Scale: Financialization and Contemporary North American Poetry (Palgrave 2023). Recent poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, and Five Points. A professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she teaches poetry workshops and literature classes, she lives in Reno.

Gailmarie Pahmeier, now Emeritus faculty, taught creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno. Widely published, she’s the author of three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry, the most recent being Of Bone, Of Ash, Of Ordinary Saints (WSC Press, 2020) which was nominated for the High Plains Book Award. In 2015, she was appointed Reno’s first Poet Laureate, in 2016 she was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2017, she was selected as Outstanding Teacher in the Humanities. In 2021, the governor of Nevada appointed her Poet Laureate, State of Nevada. In 2022, she was selected as a Laureate Fellow, Academy of American Poets. 

Image Credit: 

Maynard Dixon, Lonesome Hills of Nevada, 1935, Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches. Private Collection. Image courtesy Mark Sublette, Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ