Randolph Sims helped American Land Artist Michael Heizer use land moving equipment for the first time on Nevada’s Coyote Dry Lake in 1968.  Sims became an early Earthworks artist in his own right when Heizer encouraged him to use a backhoe on the playa “on the spur of the moment.” This archive exhibition includes drawings of Sims’ earthworks that were both proposed and fully-realized between 1968-1991.

While working in the field with the Land Arts Program of the American West, Bethany Wood collected images and impressions of major land features, such as Spiral Jetty and the Bingham Copper Pit. But she also kept note of the nomadic encampment deployed by the class, and from that created a unique metal-and-paper pop-up “book.” Her works take some of the largest land interventions in the West and transform them into small intricate sculptures you can hold in your hand.

Using vintage sheet music of the “Great American Song Book” as his backdrop, Paul Valadez re-envisions the idea of the songbook, integrating nostalgic images with “Spanglish” text, resulting in a dichotomy of oblique visual ideas that are equal parts humor and social commentary. Valadez uses metal, acrylics, text, and mixed media to create a concept of “old signage,” with subtle hints of race, culture and history. His current work is autobiographical with semi-satirical social commentary inspired by his childhood memories of growing up in a bi-cultural household.

These works are drawn from the Nevada Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

Enrique Chagoya’s provocative works incorporate diverse symbolic elements from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, and American popular culture. Chagoya often appropriates the visual tropes of Western modernism in his works, just as the masters of Modern art cannibalized so-called primitive forms without properly contextualizing them. This exhibition highlights some of Chagoya’s most fascinating pieces: artist’s books that take their form from pre-Columbian codices. His contemporary codices illustrate an imagined world in which the European conquest of the New World failed and the normative culture of the Americas is based in indigenous ideology.

The artworks in this exhibition are drawn from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.

The Robert S. and Dorothy J. Keyser Art of the Greater West Collection at the Nevada Museum of Art aims to make connections between artistic practices and diverse cultures of the Greater West super-region—a geographic area that spans from Alaska to Patagonia, and from Australia to the American West. The artworks included in this small, focused, survey exhibition encourage conversations surrounding indigenous cultural practices such as mark-making and mapping; visual representations of settlement and expansion; and depictions of changes to the landscape brought about by colliding cultures.

The interpretive materials designed for this exhibition are directly tied to Nevada Department of Education K-12 Social Studies Standards.  

This series of eight, large-scale paintings by Robert Beckmann reveals the potential effects of a nuclear detonation on an American-built, single-family home. The series is based on real-life, Cold War-era testing undertaken on the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site). The deep-red images are based on footage from a 1953 documentary film about the detonation of a 16-kiloton nuclear bomb nicknamed “Annie.” The artist remembers watching the film as a young boy growing up during the Cold War era.

Nevada’s past and future are closely intertwined with the nuclear history and politics of the United States. Under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site)—located just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas—saw the detonation of 928 nuclear devices between 1951 and 1992. Visual artists from around the world have responded in a myriad of ways to this nuclear legacy—and the Nevada Museum of Art houses a number of artworks in its permanent collection related to this subject matter.

This exhibition is organized in conjunction with the 2018 NV STEAM Conference, a statewide education conference focused on ideas and strategies that incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math education into innovative classroom practices that foster student creativity and innovation. The NV STEAM Conference was presented in partnership with the Desert Research Institute’s Science Alive program and supported by the Nevada Department of Education and the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council.

A highlight of the E.L. Wiegand Work Ethic Collection, American artist Helen Lundeberg’s History of Transportation traces a progression of labor from the Native American era to the dawn of the airline industry in the 1940s. During the Great Depression, Lundeberg proposed her concept for a public mural celebrating the ongoing contributions of workers to society. Commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project, Lundeberg’s mural was eventually constructed in the southern California city of Inglewood.

In 2018, the State of Israel marks seventy years since its founding by the United Nations following World War II. For this occasion, the Nevada Museum of Art presents work by two female Israeli artists who create work that is simultaneously grounded in the history of photography, while delivering a fresh and independent viewpoint to the dialogue surrounding art and environment.

Several years ago, the Nevada Museum of Art partnered with John and Catherine Farahi to organize a trip to Israel for Museum patrons that combined historical and cultural site visits with architecture tours, museum visits and stops at artists’ studios. Two of the contemporary artists that the group encountered—established sculptor and video artist Michal Rovner, and mid-career photographer Tal Shochat—resonated with the group and with the Museum’s focus on artists and their creative interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments. Works by Rovner and Shochat have been brought together for this exhibition marking Israel’s anniversary.

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Premier Sponsor

Atlantis Casino Resort Spa | Catherine and John Farahi

Lead Sponsor

Anonymous

Major Sponsor

John and Carol Ann Badwick

Sponsor

Susan Baker, Wawona Foundation
Crystal Family Foundation

Supporting Sponsors

Nancy Flanigan; Heidi Allyn Loeb; Mary Catherine and Ken Pierson; Sandy Raffealli | Bill Pearce Motors; Suzanne Silverman and Dennis Dworkin

Additional Support

Iris and Mark Frank; Mimi Ellis-Hogan; Sharon and Gary Jacobson; Hy Kashenberg; Gary Lieberthal; Cary Lurie; Nancy and Alan Maiss; Jacob Margolis; Leslie and Steve Pansky; Joan and Michael Pokroy; Jean Venneman and YaYa Jacoby; Darby and David Walker

The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych explores the noted New York artist’s creative arc from early, hyperrealist works through more introspective and fantastical later works. The exhibition’s centerpiece is The Fulbright Triptych, a monumental three-part work measuring fourteen across that Roberta Smith, The New York Times art critic once described as “a crackling, obsessive showboat of a painting, dreamed up during a decade when the medium supposedly teetered on the brink of death.”

The visually complex Triptych is part autobiographical essay, part homage to Renaissance artists and their craft, part reflection on the historical legacies of the 20th century, and part meditation on the power of images to inspire across time and place. In addition to The Fulbright Triptych, the exhibition includes examples of Dinnerstein’s subtly evocative drawings and paintings from the 1960s through the 1990s, which continually interrogate the role of art in lived human experience.

The Lasting World: Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych seeks to engage visitors and the broader public in discussions of what individual works of art mean, and how significance and relevance are constructed from different viewpoints. The exhibition was organized by the Museum of Art & Archaeology, University of Missouri in collaboration with the Nevada Museum of Art.

Hear more about the story behind The Fulbright Triptych in this NPR story.

Join the Museum and Classical Tahoe on Friday, July 20 for a one-of-a-kind event that celebrates art, life, and the bonds of family. “A Conversation on the Mysteries of Art and Family” is a discussion between acclaimed musician Simone Dinnerstein and her father, visual artist Simon Dinnerstein. Following this discussion between father and daughter, Simone Dinnerstein will perform selections from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The evening begins with an intimate reception and exhibition preview. Purchase tickets.

Sponsors

Jan and David Hardie; Charlotte and Dick McConnell; Madylon and Dean Meiling