This exhibition features paintings by esteemed wildlife painter John Banovich, alongside historical artworks dating from the 15th through 20th centuries by internationally renowned artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and George Stubbs, all focused on depicting the extraordinary African lion. An internationally recognized artist who has studied lions for decades, Banovich has created a body of work that is also an homage to these animals. King of Beasts features more than thirty artworks that explore questions about humankind’s deep fear, love, and admiration for these creatures. The exhibition spans nearly twenty-five years of work and assembles his body of work focused on African lions for the very first time.

In Africa, the lion has served as a symbol of strength, bravery, and physical prowess among many cultures. However, today nearly all wild lions are found within small regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, and a tiny population exists in India. Outside of protected areas, the African lion is disappearing at an alarming rate. Conservationists agree that the remaining population must be protected if these magnificent creatures are to survive.

Born 1964 in Butte, Montana, John Banovich is known internationally for his large, dramatic portrayals of iconic wildlife. Today, Banovich’s work can be found in private and corporate collections, as well as museums throughout the world. In addition to his artworks, he uses his paintings to raise awareness about imperiled species through Banovich Wildscapes Foundation. Funds generated from artwork sales are reinvested to support grassroots conservation efforts that promote habitat protection, science-based wildlife management and sustainable tourism.

Sponsors
Bank of America
Victoria Zoellner

Supporting Sponsors
Eldorado Resorts, Inc.
Alan and Nancy Maiss

Additional Support
Baranof Jewelers
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction
Phelps Engineering Services, Inc.
Donald Schupak
Scottsdale Art Auction
E.J. and Emil Solimine and Family

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of iconoclastic creators pushed against industrialization to enlighten humanity with their revolutionary take on beauty. Drawn from the collection of the city of Birmingham, United Kingdom, Victorian Radicals brings together more than 145 paintings, works on paper, and decorative objects—many of which have never been exhibited outside the U.K.—to illuminate this dynamic period of British art. 

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the champions of the Arts & Crafts Movement offered a radical vision of art and society inspired by pre-Renaissance culture. Works by pioneering artists Ford Madox Brown, Kate Elizabeth Bunce, Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others, represent the response of Britain’s first modern art movement to the industrialization of the period.  

Artists and designers explored vital concerns of their time—the relationship between art and nature, religious themes, questions of class and gender identity, the value of the handmade versus machine production, and the search for beauty in an age of industry. 

This is the final opportunity to see this unparalleled exhibition before it leaves the West Coast.   

Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement is organized by the American Federation of Arts and Birmingham Museums Trust. The national tour is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding provided by Clare McKeon and the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation.

Lead Sponsors

Wayne and Rachelle Prim
The Six Talents Foundation

Major Sponsors

Carole K. Anderson
The Deborah and T.J. Day Foundation

Sponsors

Blanchard, Krasner & French
Barbara and Tad Danz
Nancy and Brian Kennedy
Jenny and Garrett Sutton | Corporate Direct
Whittier Trust, Investment & Wealth Management

Supporting Sponsors

Haynie & Company
Dinah O’Brien
Pat and Marshall Postman

Additional Support

Kathie Bartlett

Promotional Partner

Reno-Tahoe International Airport

This exhibition features 24 of Ann Johnston’s large-scale quilts inspired by the Sierra Nevada. Johnston’s quilts—made from cloth that the artist has dyed herself—make creative use of patterns and textures to create literal, abstract, and sometimes completely imaginative representations of the area. Using both machine and hand-stitching, the artist creates dimensional surfaces that reflect the varied geological makeup of the Sierra Nevada.

The collection of work presents subjects that visitors to the Sierra might recognize—bands of colors in the earth, mineral-rich rock layers that have been squeezed and heated over centuries, mountain peaks, lakes, and rock formations. “My creative process has involved both looking at what is there on the land at present, as well as trying to imagine events unseen,” the artist writes. This exhibit also features several new works created by Johnston in the past year.

Sponsors
Sandy Raffealli, in memory of Molly Meeker O’Dea
Volunteers in Art of the Nevada Museum of Art

Supporting Sponsors
Charles and Margaret Burback Foundation
Roger H. Elton

The Art of Jack Malotte will be on view in Elko, Nevada, at the Western Folklife Center, July 10 through mid-December 2020.

Jack Malotte makes artworks that celebrate the landscapes of the Great Basin, with a unique focus on contemporary political issues faced by Native people seeking to protect and preserve access to their lands. Malotte infuses wry humor into his work, even as he delves into subject matter that is sometimes serious and sobering. Malotte’s most recent work reconsiders historical narratives and myths of the American West, refers to Western Shoshone and Washoe traditions and legends, and highlights longtime political, environmental, and legal struggles of Native communities.

For many years Malotte produced graphics and illustrations for the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., the Western Shoshone Sacred Lands Association, and the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. This work will be on view alongside drawings, sketches, and prints from early in his career.  During his exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, Malotte will complete an outdoor, public mural on an exterior wall of the building.

Malotte was born in Schurz, Nevada, lived in Lee, Nevada as a young boy, and eventually moved to Reno where he attended local schools including Wooster High School. At the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California (1971-74), he was influenced by the work of Arthur Okamura, Jack Mendenhall, and Chuck Close. Malotte also worked as a U.S. Forest Service Firefighter. Malotte, who is Western Shoshone and Washoe, currently resides in Duckwater, Nevada, a rural community located in central Nevada. He is an enrolled member of the South Fork Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone.

The Nevada Museum of Art published a 240-page, hardcover book in conjunction with the exhibition, with an essay by Ann M. Wolfe, Andrea and John C. Deane Family Senior Curator and Deputy Director; and contributions from Ben Aleck, Dr. Victoria Bomberry, Allan L. Edmunds, Bob Fulkerson, Debra Harry, Ph.D, Jean LaMarr, Sheila Leslie, Dr. Sharon Malotte, Arlan D. Melendez, and Virginia “DeDee” Sanchez. Visit shop.nevadaart.org to purchase The Art of Jack Malotte book.

Major Sponsors
The Satre Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada

Sponsors
Nevada Arts Council
Sandy Raffealli | Bill Pearce Motors

Supporting Sponsors
Anonymous
Kathie Bartlett
National Endowment for the Arts

Media Sponsors
KUNR Reno Public Radio
Sierra Nevada Media Group

This exhibition assembles photographs, films, and performance documentation by women artists who situate the nude female body in outdoor landscapes. It is organized in conjunction with a major retrospective exhibition of modern American photographer Anne W. Brigman, who was noted for her pioneering nude self-portraits made in the early twentieth century.

Laid Bare in the Landscape brings together a range of imagery: from beautiful and sensual self-portraits, to sometimes-surreal and provocative statements by feminist artists beginning in the 1970s. The artists interrogate ideas surrounding beauty, femininity, vulnerability, ritual, identity, and body politics, as they relate to nature and the environment. Artists in the exhibition include Laura Aguilar, Judy Chicago, Imogen Cunningham, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Judy Dater, Mary Beth Edelson, Regina Jose Galindo, Kirsten Justesen, Ana Mendieta, Otobong Nkanga, Joan Myers, Cara Romero, Xaviera Simmons, Jo Spence, Carolee Schneemann, and Francesca Woodman.

To compare the proto-feminist landscape photographs of Brigman to her feminist counterparts of the latter twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries is to weave a new thread through generations of visionary women artists who have aimed to further alternative ways of seeing and knowing.

#ConfrontingTradition

Supporting Sponsor

Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The paintings of Hans Meyer-Kassel (1872-1952) have hung in the castles of kings and the homes of presidents. Still today, decades after his death, his artwork can be found in state capitols, university campuses, historical societies, court houses, government buildings and museums across the United States and Europe. His artwork lives in archives, books, magazines and even on a United States postage stamp—as well as in the homes of scores of Nevada families. Classically trained as a painter at the University of Munich in his native Germany, Meyer-Kassel immigrated to the United States at the end of World War I to escape the post-war tumult. He endured the Great Depression in New York City, but after being invited to exhibit in Pasadena, California in 1935, he became enamored with the American West. Within a year, he and his wife, Maria, moved to Reno, later relocating to Carson City, before settling in Genoa, where he worked from his small studio at the base of the Carson Range. Meyer-Kassel loved Nevada from the time of his first visit, and over the next two decades, he built his reputation as one of the most prolific and successful artists in the region. While his primary interest was portraiture, he also became known for his vividly colored floral still lifes, and his depictions of Nevada’s vast desert expanses, river valleys, and cloud-filled skies.

This exhibition is co-curated by longtime Reno art specialist Jack Bacon and Ann M. Wolfe, Andrea and John C. Deane Family Senior Curator and Deputy Director at the Nevada Museum of Art. It includes more than seventy paintings, with additional drawings, photographs, ephemera and artifacts drawn from private and institutional collections, including the Douglas County Historical Society and the Nevada Historical Society. Particular emphasis is placed on Meyer-Kassel’s romance with Nevada, where from his home in Genoa, his more formal, classically influenced style mellowed into a painterly perfection that resulted in breathtaking interpretations of Nevada’s landscape.

The first major book on Hans Meyer-Kassel, published by Jack Bacon & Company in association with the Nevada Museum of Art, accompanies the exhibition. The primary essay is authored by longtime Nevada historian Guy Clifton, with a foreword by Ann M. Wolfe. The 204-page catalogue includes over 100 full-color plates. Jack Bacon has published numerous books since 1983, including: Jack Johnson vs. James Jeffries “The Fight of the Century,” The Art of Lyle V. Ball, Dempsey in Nevada, Preserving Traces of the Great Basin Indians, and many others.

Major Sponsor

Louise A. Tarble Foundation

Sponsors

Anonymous; The Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation; Nevada Arts Council; The Private Bank by Nevada State Bank; Sandy Raffealli/Porsche of Reno; Volunteers in Art of the Nevada Museum of Art; Edgar F. Kleiner

Supporting Sponsors

Anonymous; Irene Drews; Jenny and Garrett Sutton | Corporate Direct, Inc.

Lead Media Sponsor

Sierra Nevada Media Group

Media Sponsors

Getaway Reno-Tahoe; KUNR Reno Public Radio; Nevada Magazine; Reno-Tahoe International Airport; Tahoe Quarterly

Drawn from the collections of Bruce C. Paltenghi and Dr. Richard Paltenghi, this exhibition features drawings and paintings by American artist Maynard Dixon. Inspired to begin collecting by their father, the Paltenghi brothers have amassed over seventy artworks that offer an intimate look at Dixon’s life in the American West. Included are many never-before-seen drawings with subjects ranging from mountain and desert landscapes, to portraits and nude figure studies.

Major Sponsors

The Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation; Brian and Nancy Kennedy; the Satre Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada; Whittier Trust, Investment & Wealth Management

Supporting Sponsors

Denise Cashman; Deborah C. Day; Dickson Realty; Gigi and Lash Turville

Commissioned by the Nevada Museum of Art, New York-based artist Anthony McCall has created a new immersive light installation—a compelling example of a virtual environment. British-born McCall is known for his ‘solid-light’ installations. Occupying a space between sculpture, cinema and drawing, the new work will become part of the Museum’s Contemporary Art Collection.

Anthony McCall (born 1940) is a British-born artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with his seminal Line Describing a Cone, in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space.

McCall’s work is represented in numerous collections, including Tate, London, England; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; SFMoMA, San Francisco; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Hirshhorn, Washington, DC.

Major Sponsor

Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne

The Nevada Museum of Art is proud to present to our community The Horse, a comprehensive exhibition detailing the enduring bond between horses and humanity. The exhibition explores early interactions between horses and humans and portrays how horses have, over time, influenced civilization through advancements in warfare, trade, transportation, agriculture, sports, and many other facets of human life. The exhibition was created by leading scholars and scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dioramas, skeletal mounts, fossils, cultural artifacts from around the world, and interactive computerized modules – will draw visitors into the world of the horse as never before. An immersive multi-media experience, The Horse explores our history, inter-dependence, and emotional connection with this remarkable animal.

The Horse is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH); the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau-Ottawa; The Field Museum, Chicago; and the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Premiere Sponsor

Louise A. Tarble Foundation

Lead Sponsors

Barrick Gold; The Bretzlaff Foundation; Irene and J. George Drews; The Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation; Anne Brockinton Lee and Robert M. Lee

Major Sponsors

Damonte Ranch, Perry M. DiLoreto; Deborah C. Day; Dickson Realty; Hooker Creek Ranch; Nevada Arts Council; Sandy Raffealli, Raffealli Family Trust; Wells Fargo; E. L. Wiegand Foundation

Supporting Sponsors

Kathie Bartlett; Leah Elizabeth Cashman and Rhonda Cashman Evans; Marshall R. Matley Foundation; Jennifer and Jason Patterson; Gigi and Lash Turville; Whittier Trust Company of Nevada

Additional Sponsors

Answerwest; Jeanne Blach; Marc Grock; Clark J. Guild Jr. Charitable Foundation; Charlotte and Dick McConnell; Karen and Bill Prezant

Media Sponsors

Getaway Reno-Tahoe; KUNR; Lake Tahoe TV; Reno-Tahoe International Airport; Tahoe Quarterly; Western Art & Architecture

Each year for the last ten years, Victoria Sambunaris (American, born 1964) has set out from her home in New York to cross the United States by car, alone with her camera. Her photographs capture the expansive American landscape and the natural and fabricated adaptations that appear throughout it. In conjunction with the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Nevada Museum of Art presents a selection of approximately forty photographs from Sambunaris’s body of work, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition at a major American museum. Hauntingly beautiful in their documentation of the declining American terrain, Sambunaris’s images celebrate the intersection of civilization, geology, and natural history, featuring trains in Texas and Wyoming, trucks in New Jersey and Wisconsin, the oil pipeline in Alaska, uranium tailings in Utah, and a unique view of Arizona’s Petrified Forest. Together, they present a sparse and vast landscape dotted by human intervention that is distinctly American. The exhibition will also include a comprehensive archival installation featuring maps, journals, and additional records of the artist’s travels.

ARTIST BIO

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1964, Victoria Sambunaris documents, through the lens of her camera, the vast terrain of the United States and the impact that humans have had on the natural landscape. Sambunaris received a BA from Mount Vernon College in 1986 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1999. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States; however, her exhibition at the Albright-Knox marks her first solo museum exhibition. Her work can also be seen in numerous collections throughout the United States, including those of the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sambunaris has participated in the Ucross Foundation Residency Program in Wyoming (2010), as well as the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s Wendover Residence Program in Nevada (2004), and has been awarded a Lannan Foundation Fellowship (2002) and a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2000). She has held numerous teaching positions, and currently lives and works wherever her intuition takes her.

The exhibition Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape originated at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and was organized by Christie Mazuera Davis, Program Director, Contemporary Art and Public Programs at the Lannan Foundation, and Albright-Knox Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes.

Additional support

Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico