This exhibition features over 100 pieces of Southwestern pottery produced by some of the most active pottery-producing Native American tribal groups in the Southwest region of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The exhibition compares and contrasts techniques, styles, designs, and materials used by artists working in the following pueblos: Acoma, Cochiti, Hopi, Kewa, Maricopa, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and others.

All of the works in the exhibition are from the private collection of Brenda and John Blom. Since the early 1990s, they have acquired fine examples modern pottery from potters, traders, shops, and pueblo villages in the Southwest. “Southwestern pottery is not only one of the world’s important art forms,” Blom explains, “it is the most accessible.” The Bloms began collecting pottery during a trip to Santa Fe in 1991 with their friends Allan and Carol Hayes. Since then, John Blom and Al Hayes have co-authored three books on Southwestern pottery, and the Bloms have amassed a collection of over 1,500 pots.

All of the works in the exhibition are from the private collection of Brenda and John Blom.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil is an examination of one the most important subjects of our time by one of the most respected and recognized contemporary photographers in the world. From 1997 through 2009, Burtynsky traveled internationally to chronicle the production, distribution, and use of this critical fuel. In addition to revealing the rarely seen mechanics of its manufacture, he photographs the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the Earth and by the sprawl generated around its use.

These images tell an epic story of mankind expressed through our discovery, exploitation, and celebration of this vital natural resource.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Lead Sponsor

Carol Franc Buck Foundation

Major Sponsor

The Phil and Jennifer Satre Family Fund of the Community Foundation of Western Nevada

Support

Scotiabank Group

Additional Support

Barrick Gold of North America, Kathie Bartlett, Mark E Pollack Foundation, and Lance and Karyn Tendler

“All voluntary travel is characterized by longing for some elusive element that lies out of reach in daily life.” –Lucy Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place

In her Off Road series, photographer Hoor Al Qasimi (Emirati, b. 1980) adopts travel as her subject matter. These images speak of physical displacement, of removing oneself from one’s customary environment, of seeking insight by looking beyond the obvious well-worn path and gazing to the territory that lies beyond. The landscapes documented by these photographs consist of everything that was visible to Al Qasimi from the highway during a trip across the US; yet the title, Off Road, suggests a fascination with the terrain invisible from the vantage point of the vehicle. Which stunning vistas might have been captured had the artist ventured beyond the familiarity of the highway?

In these landscape photographs mood is conveyed by weather as the skies shift from bright and sunny, to gloomy and overcast, to blustery and dark. Telephone poles, road markers, and fences define boundaries and mark the presence of civilization, alluding to land ownership, government presence, and communications systems. The ploughed fields and farmland which appear early in the “journey” are quickly replaced by vast plains, towering buttes, and arid desert. Moving through space, traveling down the “open road,” serves as a metaphor for emotional passage.

The final image in the series, a side-view mirror of the vehicle offering a reflected glimpse of the artist’s hand grasping the camera,recalls photographer Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934) and his America by Car series.

Frohawk Two Feathers is the artistic alter-ego of Umar Rashid, born in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois. A performer, writer and artist, his work is filled with real and imagined colonial histories and often takes the form of mixed media paintings that resemble Native American ledger paintings. Central to the understanding of Two Feather’s work is a construct he calls “Frengland.” The artist explained, “Frengland is a place I created that presupposes that 18th century England and France were never at war with each other and that they merged into one huge, unstoppable colonial empire. Imagine all the countries they conquered put together. They’d put a flag in most of the world.” And Those Figures Through the Leaves. And That Light Through the Smoke is the second installment of Two Feathers’ “The Americas” series, which takes place on the continents of North and South America.

The title of this exhibition derives from “Sleeping Ute,” a song by the Brooklyn, New York-based band Grizzly Bear. It tells the story of the 1792-1794 journeys of two young, optimistic “Frenglish” military scouts and their companions.

Although they have lost support for their mission—the Frenglish Republic withdrew all funding due to the threat of war on the European continent—and are harried at all sides by man and nature, the scouts and their entourage continue on their mission to reach the Pacific.

The exhibition will include acrylic and ink portraits of key Frenglish characters featured in Two Feather’s narrative, and imaginary colonial maps, among other objects based on the artist’s extensive research into the customs, clothing and weaponry, and geography of the areas represented.

Signaling the Nevada Museum of Art’s ongoing commitment to contemporary photography, William Eggleston: Los Alamos will feature seventy-five of the iconic American artist’s vivid color images taken in the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Los Alamos, and Los Angeles between 1965 and 1974.

His compelling photographs capture the unexpected beauty of parked cars, people, billboards, and abandoned storefronts across the American landscape. Eggleston titled the series Los Alamos, after the national laboratory in New Mexico where atomic weapons were developed.

Born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, Eggleston is largely credited with legitimizing color photography as a fine art form. In 1976 the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited Eggleston’s photographs in a groundbreaking solo exhibition—the first fine-art exhibition of color photography almost a century after the introduction of color film.

The Nevada Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Andy Warhol: Athletes, a collection of 10 paintings by the iconic artist featuring some of the most celebrated sport stars of the 1970s.

Andy Warhol: Athletes immortalizes 10 athletes in Warhol’s signature style of screen-printing – a project commissioned by his friend and collector Richard Weisman. The exhibition also includes a portrait of Weisman painted by Warhol.

The exhibition exemplifies the changing nature of fame in the twentieth century as sports figures became celebrities in American popular culture. The athletes featured in this series benefitted from newfound celebrity status following the series due to Warhol’s international fame. Featured sport stars include Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Tom Seaver, Rod Gilbert, Jack Nicklaus, Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Willie Shoemaker and Pelé. Each of the paintings measure 40 x 40 inches.

Paruku is the region in Australia’s Western Desert that surrounds the inland body of water known to settlers as Lake Gregory. Named after the English-born explorer Sir August Gregory, this terminal desert lake has long been a resource for the Walmajarri-speaking Aboriginal people. The ancient shoreline of Lake Gregory contains what may be the oldest sites of continuous human cultural production in the world, with artifacts excavated there estimated to be as old as 50,000 years.

The local Aboriginal people—approximately 150 men and women who are referred to as the “Traditional Owners” of Paruku—live in the nearby settlement of Mulan. The unique cultural and environmental values of Paruku led the Australian government to declare it an Indigenous Protected Area, or IPA, in 2001.

The Paruku Project was a two-year effort consisting of teams of scientists, artists, and writers working in this Aboriginal desert community, one of the poorest and most remote in Australia. The first task of the teams was to assess current conditions. They found an environment severely stressed by invasive species and a culture slowly losing its identity. The second task was to design and implement cross-cultural and transformational responses to these conditions, many of which involved artmaking.

Australian artist Mandy Martin and conservationist Guy Fitzhardinge, along with writer and artist Kim Mahood, worked with Walmajari people to revitalize the art center in Mulan, which in turn helped attract attention and funding from policy makers to address challenges facing the region.

Support

The John Ben Snow Memorial Trust

Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art will be the first comprehensive traveling exhibition of objects from Duke’s remarkable Hawaiian home, Shangri La. Situated amidst five acres of interlocking terraced gardens and pools overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Honolulu’s Diamond Head, Shangri La powerfully reflects Duke’s life-long aesthetic passions. This exhibition brings together furnishings and objects, contemporary works by eight of Shangri La’s artists in residence, vintage photographs and films, documentation of the estate’s construction, architectural drawings, and ephemera exploring the history and experience of this remarkable place. A 216-page catalogue published by Skira Rizzoli accompanies the exhibition.

Lead Sponsor

Nancy and Martin Cohen

Major Sponsor

Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

Supporting Sponsor

Bally Technologies

Sponsors

Jeanne and Alan Blach, Denise and Tim Cashman, and Enid A. Oliver, Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.

Additional Sponsor

Northern Nevada International Center

This exhibition was organized by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

Accomplished painter Patricia Chidlaw finds her inspiration in neon-era motels, junkyards, Laundromats, train stations, parking lots, movie palace marquees, empty coffee shops, and void spaces, where content sneaks in via side doors and implies dormant life forces.

Chidlaw is an American realist seeking, and finding, profundity in the realm of the commonplace. She takes aims at dignity and a durable beauty amidst the rubble, ruins and soon-to-be-obsolete side routes of America.

This exhibition features twenty paintings from the 1990s up to the present, representing her extraordinary skill in depicting urban landscapes with characteristic pictorial grace. A richly illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.