Nick Larsen on “Old Haunts, Lower Reaches”

Drawing on the structure of Belongings, his 2019 artist’s book, join Nick Larsen as he weaves image, text, and short storytelling as entry points into his exhibition Old Haunts, Lower Reaches. In the no man’s land between fictional archaeological inventory and autobiography, Larsen maps and mines both what’s present and visible in the desert landscape and, maybe more importantly, what isn’t.

This speculative groundwork supports other preoccupations to be explored here: camouflage, punk merch, the infinite uses for a bandana/hanky, map legend poetics, excavation and survey patterns, color naming, place naming, ghost town reoccupation, vestiges and artifacts, and the meaningful human activity that transforms a place into a site.

*Admission includes access to First Thursday

The Cultures of Collage: Camouflage, Fantasy, and Utopic Failure in Nick Larsen’s Work

Collage, as a mode of visual culture, has long been associated with the prospect of rewriting history. Relatedly, it is a site for the material realization of visual trickery, fantasy, time travel, and much more. This talk, given by Brett M. Van Hoesen, Ph.D., examines the history and culture of collage in conjunction with the exhibition of Nick Larsen’s “Old Haunts, Lower Reaches.”

Dr. Brett M. Van Hoesen is Associate Professor and Area Head of Art History at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has published extensively on the history of photomontage and Dada. In 2019, she received Nevada Humanities’ Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award.

Museum Confidential Live in Reno with Cannupa Hanska Luger

Join us for a live recording of Museum Confidential, a popular podcast syndicated on National Public Radio and Spotify, that lifts the curtain on museum practices, art world issues, and culture-makers. Inspired by the Nevada Museum of Art’s Indigenous Art Futures Initiative and the current exhibition Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless, podcast founder Jeff Martin will host a lively conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota) and Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Apsara DiQuinzio, about Luger’s practice, the inspiration for the exhibition, and more. The program will also celebrate the launch of the exhibition catalog produced in conjunction with the exhibition, and the artist will be available to sign copies.

About Museum Confidential:

Think of a museum. Any museum. Which artworks get displayed, and which don’t, and why? Where do they keep all the unshown (or unshowable) pieces? And why do they keep them at all? Museum Confidential was originally an unprecedented exhibition at Philbrook Museum of Art exploring such questions; it’s now a popular podcast that is posted twice monthly, from September through May — a creative partnership between Jeff Martin of Philbrook and Scott Gregory of Public Radio Tulsa. MC covers the same fertile ground that the exhibit itself had covered, of course — plus lots of other topics relating to art, artists, museums, curators, museum-going, art history, the art market, and so on.

*Doors Open at 5pm with Cash Bar

Guided Tour