For 50 years, Robert Adams (born 1937) has made compelling, provocative, and highly influential photographs that show the wonder and fragility of the American landscape, its inherent beauty, and the inadequacy of our response to it. American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams celebrates the art of this seminal American photographer and explores the reverential way he looks at the world around him and the almost palpable silence of his work. Capturing the sense of peace and harmony created through what Adams calls “the silence of light” that can be seen on the prairie, in the woods, and by the ocean, American Silence features some 175 pictures from 1965 to 2015. Other images on view question our moral silence to the desecration of that beauty by consumerism, industrialization, and lack of environmental stewardship. Divided into three sections—The Gift, Our Response, and Tenancy—the exhibition includes works from not only the artist’s most important projects but also lesser-known ones that depict suburban sprawl, strip malls, highways, homes, and stores, as well as rivers, skies, the prairie, and the ocean. While these photographs lament the ravages that have been inflicted on the land, they also pay homage to what remains.

Organized in cooperation with the artist, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 332-page catalogue published by the National Gallery of Art and Aperture, New York. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head of the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.

This exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition and catalog are made possible through the leadership support of the Trellis Fund and a generous gift from Jane P. Watkins. The exhibition is also made possible in part by The Shared Earth Foundation. Additional support is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher, Wes and Kate Mitchell, Nion McEvoy, Greg and Aline Gooding, and the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.

Lead Sponsor

Wayne L. Prim Foundation

Major Sponsors

The Bretzlaff Foundation
Gabelli Foundation

Sponsors

Blanchard, Krasner & French | Angela and Mark Krasner
Barbara and Tad Danz
Kathryn A. Hall | Laurel Trust Company
Garrett and Jenny Sutton | Corporate Direct

Supporting Sponsor

Tammy and Michael Dermody

Additional Support

Kathie Bartlett

End of the Range: Charlotte Skinner in the Eastern Sierra is on view in Irvine, California at the UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art University of California, Irvine through January 18, 2025.

Charlotte B. Skinner (1879-1963) was an artist and educator living in the Eastern Sierra of California from 1905 to 1933. She spent her early life in San Francisco, immersing herself within a community of professional artists working and exhibiting there. After moving to the remote, rural community of Lone Pine, California, her home on Brewery Street became an escape from the hustle and bustle of the Bay Area for artists and friends seeking community among the company of other artists.

Born in 1879 and raised in San Francisco, Skinner studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (known today as the San Francisco Art Institute) under Arthur Frank Matthews and Gottardo Piazzoni. It was there that she met fellow student, artist, and mining engineer, William Lyle Skinner. The two married in 1905 and moved to the Skinner family’s home in Lone Pine, CA, where she would reside for almost 30 years, immersing herself in painting the landscapes of Owens Valley as well as printmaking, and teaching. Committed to her artistic practice, Skinner exhibited extensively during her life showing works throughout the West Coast, including the Stanford Art Gallery (1930), Portland Art Museum (1933), M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (1956). Skinner also exhibited at the Nevada Art Gallery (Nevada Museum of Art) in 1952 alongside illustrator and friend, Maynard Dixon, and noted California landscape painter William Wendt.

Skinner counted herself among the artistic circles of renowned photographers and artists of the West including Dorothea Lange, Maynard Dixon, Imogen Cunningham, Roi Partridge, and Ralph Stackpole. Her home became a retreat and a site of inspiration for these artists and others who were passing through Owens Valley seeking new subject matter and like-minded creatives.

This exhibition features original paintings and drawings of the Eastern Sierra by Charlotte B. Skinner. It also includes works by artist-friends including Dorothea Lange, Maynard Dixon, Roi Partridge, Sonya Noskowiak, Ralph Stackpole, and William Wendt, along with Panamint Shoshone baskets from her own personal collection.

It is accompanied by a small publication with an essay written by Kolin Perry.

Generously supported by John A. White, Jr., in memory of Charlotte Skinner’s grandson, James Skinner

Bolivian artist Sonia Falcone’s Campo de Color (Color Field) is an immersive installation made from spices, salt, and other raw materials. It is not only a multi-sensory experience, but also a commentary on the ways that foods continue to connect people, cultures, and regions in our increasingly globalized world.

Since 1999, Northern Nevada middle and high school students have been invited to submit their artwork to the Scholastic Art Awards competition. The Museum’s annual presentation of the Scholastic Awards is scheduled in conjunction with the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, a national program designed to identify America’s most gifted young artists and writers. This program has honored some of our nation’s most celebrated artists including Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Michael Sarich, Cindy Sherman, Robert Redford, and Andy Warhol.

Students in grades 7-12 (age 13 and up) submit their art which is then judged by a panel of local artists and art professionals. Artworks are eligible for the highest award of Gold Key, followed by a Silver Key, or an Honorable Mention based on originality, technical skill, and an emergence of a personal vision. Along with going on to compete in the national competition, select works will be shown in a joint exhibition presented by the Nevada Museum of Art and The Lilley Museum of Art, the School of the Arts, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno.

2023 Award Recipients

Gold Key Works
On view at Sheppard Contemporary | Church Fine Arts, University of Nevada, Reno
Gallery Hours: Thursday – Saturday, 3 – 6 pm
Parking is available at the Brian J. Whalen Parking Complex, bottom floor.

American Visions Nominated Works
On view at Nevada Museum of Art / Donald W. Reynolds Grand Hall

Award Ceremony
Nightingale Concert Hall | Church Fine Arts, University of Nevada, Reno
Thursday, February 16, 2023 / 6 – 7 pm

We invite Gold and Silver Key award recipients to be honored during this special ceremony. All invited guests are encouraged to register for the Award Ceremony by February 8, 2023 to attend.

Sponsors
City of Reno Arts & Culture Commission
The Hearst Foundations
Nell J. Redfield Foundation
Heidimarie Rochlin
RBC Wealth Management
Wild Women Artists

Featuring more than thirty works, this exhibition honors the career of artist Ben Aleck, a lifelong educator and enrolled member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (Kooyooe Tukadu/cui-ui fish eaters.) Aleck was born in Reno in 1949 and raised on the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (RSIC). A graduate of Wooster High School, he attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland, California, where he witnessed the politics and protest of the Vietnam War era and the countercultural movement of the late 1960s. His past involvement with the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz have also shaped his artistic practice. Aleck’s paintings, illustrations, and prints give visual form to Indigenous stories about the stars, coyote, plants, the formation of Great Basin lands, and the origins of its people.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a book with an essay by Melissa Melero-Moose.

For the duration of the exhibition, all members of tribal communities will be offered free admission.

Sponsors

Sandy Raffealli | Bill Pearce Motors
The Phil and Jennifer Satre Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Northern Nevada
Six Talents Foundation

Supporting Sponsors

Carole Anderson

Additional Support

Kathie Bartlett
Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities
Sylvia and Jim Thacker

A largely self-taught photographer, Eleanor Preger honed her craft taking photographs at the annual Burning Man gathering that takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Over the years, she has built a reputation for capturing the colors, movement, sound, and soul of artists and artworks set against the stark and striking backdrop of the desert playa.

In spring 2022, Preger collaborated with contemporary artist Rachel Hayes, whose large-scale textile installation is currently on view in the Donald W. Reynolds Grand Hall. Preger and Hayes ventured outdoors for a series of photography sessions at Mount Rose Meadows, Lake Tahoe’s Glenbrook community, and other locales in the Tahoe Basin. With help from family and friends, Hayes’ installed her sculptural fabric artworks in a variety of dramatic landscape settings.

During these sessions, Preger took thousands of photographs. While the ever-changing light and prevailing winds certainly had a hand in determining the final product, it was Preger’s unique photographic vision that resulted in this series of dynamic photographs. Taken together, these images remind us to take pleasure in nature’s fleeting moments and to embrace the ephemeral wonders of art and nature.

Bringing together visitor favorites alongside more recent acquisitions, Drawings: Selections from the Permanent Collection, highlights contemporary works on paper from the Nevada Museum of Art holdings of over 3,000 artworks. Each work in this small exhibition demonstrates exacting precision and a commitment to the fundamentals of drawing.  Whether using graphite or ink to express a mood, create space, or tell a story, artists including Katie Holten, Anne Lindberg, Jack Malotte, Erika Osborne, Martín Ramírez, and the collective consisting of Wilson Díaz, Amy Franceschini and Renny Pritikin, have made drawing a vital component of their practice.

The artworks that comprise the E. L. Wiegand Collection date from the early twentieth century to the present and represent various manifestations of the work ethic in American art. While many emphasize people undertaking the physical act of labor, others focus on different types of work environments ranging from domestic interiors and rural landscapes to urban cityscapes and industrial scenes. By expanding the definition of the term work ethic to encompass a broad range of activities undertaken by a diverse spectrum of people from various cultural and socioeconomic groups, the collection seeks to acknowledge all those who have devoted their lives to the tireless pursuit of work.

Edwin L. Wiegand was a successful entrepreneur and inventor who made Reno his home in 1971. He died in 1980 at the age of 88, and the E. L. Wiegand Foundation was established in Reno in 1982 for general charitable purposes.

The Nevada Museum of Art thanks the E. L. Wiegand Foundation for their generous, ongoing support of this unique permanent collection.

This exhibition—primarily drawn from the Nevada Museum of Art’s permanent collection—presents work that taps into and explores various kinds of ancestral frequencies. Ranging from Indigenous artists of the Great Basin to Australia, as well as artists examining their African and Latin American roots, the artists in the exhibition explore different modes of artistic expression that inspire connections to diverse cultural histories. The double entendre of the title further underscores how considerations of cultural belonging, in particular with respect to the human relationship to its natural environs, have become irregular and displaced with the advent of modernization and the industrial revolution. Together the works in the exhibition inspire us to listen to and tune in to the frequencies and ancestral wisdoms of the past.

Additional Support

Nevada Arts Council

Guillermo Bert makes artworks that explore the endurance of immigrants who have left their home countries behind. Rooted in his personal story, his primary focus has been the experiences of people and families who enter the United States along the U.S. – Mexico border. His artworks draw metaphorical relationships between the journeys of migrants, harsh and empty desert landscapes, and the commodification and objectification of American values. This mid-career survey includes artworks in a variety of traditional and contemporary media that are drawn from the entirety of Bert’s career, as well as new works produced exclusively for this exhibition.

In his multi-media and conceptually layered works, Bert addresses the ways in which colonization and capitalistic systems contribute to cultural displacement and the loss of Indigenous identities, traditions, and religions. In series such as Encoded Textiles and Border Zone, Bert keeps old traditions alive through new technology, enticing the viewer to actively participate in his art while simultaneously transporting them into the realities of others. Through his different series, he gives voice to people who have been marginalized, silenced, and overlooked.

Bert was born in 1959, raised in Santiago, Chile, and left his home country in the early 1980s before immigrating to Los Angeles in 1981 in search of a more open and inclusive society. Bert worked as an Art Director at the Los Angeles Times and taught art at the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena, California, before dedicating his time exclusively to his own art and design.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major book published by the Nevada Museum of Art. The book will include an interview between Guest Curator Vivian Zavataro and artist Guillermo Bert. Additional scholarly essays by Alma Ruiz, an independent curator and Senior Fellow at the Center for Business and Management of the Arts, Claremont Graduate University, and former senior curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tressa Berman, Ph.D., an anthropologist, curator, and writer who lives and works in California and New Mexico; Ximena Keogh Serrano is a writer and transdisciplinary scholar based in Portland, Oregon.

A companion exhibition featuring Guillermo Bert’s work will be on view at The John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art from September 5, 2023 to January 27, 2024.

Major Sponsor

National Endowment for the Arts

Sponsors

Barbara and Tad Danz
Kathryn A. Hall and Laurel Trust

Additional Support

Andres Drobny