Learn why the Victorian Radicals found followers all over the world, from Britain to the USA, Japan, and India, with curator Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor and Chair of the History of Art at Yale University. He will detail the development of a socialist and ecological critique of capitalism in Victorian Britain that produced some of the most spectacular artworks of the industrial era.

As the world’s first industrial nation, Victorian Britain was a place where great wealth for the few was accompanied by poverty and pollution. Barringer will discuss criticisms of the time offered by John Ruskin and William Morris, who argued that machine-made goods, cheap and plentiful, were inherently ugly and that only a return to natural materials and handicrafts could restore the health of society. Accordingly, avant-garde artists in Britain produced rich and beautiful paintings, metalwork, textiles, ceramics, and glass that looked back to the glories of the medieval era but also imagined a utopian future. 

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support or questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org. 

Fawn Douglas is an Indigenous American artist and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe. Join her for a conversation about her work that gives voice to oral traditions and operates as a filter that keeps the integrity of sacred information, while allowing Nuwuvi culture to be shared with a broader audience. She’ll share her creative practice and the Nuwu Art, Cultural Arts + Activism Center, which she recently co-founded as a grassroots, community art center in Las Vegas. Douglas is currently enrolled in the MFA program at UNLV.

Fawn Douglas’s work is part of the Museum’s permanent collection and is on view in the exhibition In The Flow.

This program is hosted on Zoom. For registration support or questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org.

The Art Bite lecture series is supported by Nevada Humanities with additional sponsorship and free program registration for students supported by the Core Humanities Program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Melissa Leventon, a co-founder of Curatrix Group and former Curator-in-Charge of Textiles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, is a specialist in European and American costume and textiles. She takes audiences on a journey into the unconventional creativity of the British Aesthetic Movement, a revolution in fashion and decorative arts. 

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support and questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org.

What was the role of women designers and artists in the Arts and Crafts movement? Wendy Kaplan, LACMA Department Head and Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, explores Victorian women’s leadership in social and economic reform as well as restrictions they encountered that prevented their full participation.

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support and questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org.

Art historian and author Kirsty Stonell Walker explores the colorful histories of women of the era in her book, Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang. She will introduce an enchanting and revolutionary band of women – artists, sculptors, inventors, models, wives, sisters, and muses – who provide inspiration for groundbreakers and troublemakers today.

Stonell Walker became a “historian of the Victorian,” mainly because it rhymed. In almost twenty years’ worth of study, she has written the only biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s most notorious model and muse, Fanny Cornforth. In 2012, she updated the text to cover all-new research and material that has arisen since the publication of the first edition in 2006, including the BBC series Desperate Romantics. She is also the author of A Curl of Copper and Pearl, published in Spring 2014. In 2015 she published a novel, We Are Villains All, a murder mystery centered on the lives of a Victorian poet and his best friend, a photographer. She has written The Kissed Mouth blog since 2011, airing Victorian dirty linen in a humorous and thought-provoking way.

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support or questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org.

Professor Dennis Dworkin of University of Nevada Reno, Global Studies is an intellectual historian of Britain, Ireland, and Europe who specializes in cultural theory. From this informed perspective, he will explore the working-class, conservative, and liberal responses to a changing social landscape during the Industrial Revolution, as seen in Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement.

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support or questions, email christian.davies@nevadaart.org.

Professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, Dennis Dworkin introduces the world of the Industrial Revolution. Join us as Professor Dworkin explores the working-class, conservative, and liberal responses to a changing social landscape.

Teens are invited to meet artists from diverse backgrounds and practices through an interactive conversation exploring process, disciplines, identity, concept development, and more. Hosted by Las Vegas-based artist, Lance Smith, this online series provides meaningful opportunities for teens everywhere to connect with one another, encounter working artists, and talk about art.

Guest Artist: Justin Favela
Topic: The Color Pink, Paper and Tires

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support and questions, email claire.munoz@nevadaart.org.

Click to join 

Teens are invited to meet artists from diverse backgrounds and practices through an interactive conversation exploring process, disciplines, identity, concept development, and more. Hosted by Las Vegas-based artist, Lance Smith, this online series provides meaningful opportunities for teens everywhere to connect with one another, encounter working artists, and talk about art.

Join us in March and speak with Las Vegas-based artist Mikayla Whitmore. Discussion topics include: camouflage, mirrors and the color yellow.

Program hosted on Zoom. For registration support and questions, email claire.munoz@nevadaart.org.

Click here to directly link to Zoom Meeting

Teens are invited to meet artists from diverse backgrounds and practices through an interactive conversation exploring process, disciplines, identity, concept development, and more. Hosted by Las Vegas-based artist, Lance Smith, this online series provides meaningful opportunities for teens everywhere to connect with one another, encounter working artists, and talk about art.

Joining us this month is Krystal Ramirez, an artist who works across media, utilizing everyday materials, text, and photography to engage concepts of race, gender, and physical labor within the framework of her Latinx identity.

Program hosted on Zoom. Click here to join.