Sunday Brunch

Sunday Brunch at the Café is the perfect precursor to an afternoon exploring our galleries. Chef Colin Smith has updated the menu to include an eclectic array of options from traditional breakfast fare to lunch options–both of which pair nicely with juice, coffee, champagne or a mimosa. Doors open at 10:30 am and service continues until 2:30 pm. Reservations are required for parties of five or more, but encouraged for all as space is limited. Museum members receive 10% savings as a benefit of membership. Call the Café at 775.284.2921 for more information.

First Thursday with Musical Guest Tom VandenAvond

First Thursday with live music presented by Loud As Folk. Join us on December 5th with musical guest Tom VandenAvond. Beer by IMBIB, coffee by Bibo, friends, and art. Get in the holiday spirit with our annual Museum Shop Holiday Sale and support kids in need by dropping off new clothing, teddy bears, books, or backpacks for the Reno Rodeo Denim Drive. Catch an ichthyosaur tour with Tom Young.

Hosting partners: IMBIB Custom Brews, Bibo Coffee Co. Sponsored by: Bighorn Olive Oil Company, Northern Nevada Health System, Simple Power Inc, Summit Elevator

First Thursday with Musical Guest John Elliott

Meet up with friends for this long-standing monthly tradition of live music, beer, and plenty of fun. Live music hosted by Spike McGuire and presented in partnership with Loud as Folk, a regional singer-songwriter showcase.

Hosting partners: IMBIB Custom Brews, Bibo Coffee Co. Sponsored by: Bighorn Olive Oil Company, Simple Power Inc

First Thursday with Musical Guest Greg Rekus

Hosting partners: IMBIB Custom Brews, Bibo Coffee Co. Sponsored by: Bighorn Olive Oil Company

First Thursday with Musical Guest Moxy Ruckus

Hosting partners: IMBIB Custom Brews, Bibo Coffee Co. Sponsored by: Bighorn Olive Oil Company

First Thursday with Musical Guest Charity Kiss

Hosting partner: IMBIB Custom Brews. Sponsored by: Bighorn Olive Oil Company; Lead With Horses

First Thursday with Musical Guest Phat Mark

First Thursday returns loud and proud with live music presented in partnership with Loud As Folk, a regional singer-songwriter showcase. Meet up with friends for this long-standing monthly tradition of live music, beer and plenty of fun.

Powered by Tesla. Additional support by Great Basin Brewing Company

Griff Durham on Maynard Dixon’s 1901 Nevada Horseback Journey

In 1901, Maynard Dixon and his artist-friend Edward Borein rode horseback from Oakland, California, into Carson City, Nevada, on the first leg of an epic thousand-mile-ride through the northern Great Basin. Along the way, both men sketched and studied cowboy life and the ranches they visited. Join Griff Durham as he traces their journey through northwestern Nevada, northeastern California, and Southern Oregon, with a special focus on their illustrations. Griff Durham is an historian who has been interested in cowboy horse gear and Great Basin ranching traditions for over 50 years and has guest curated and consulted on exhibitions at the Western Folklife Center in Elko, NV.

Fallen Leaf Lake: Anita Baldwin hosts Maynard Dixon

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.

Writing the Western Landscape: A Poetry Reading and Discussion

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