For the first time ever, explore the remarkable story of how the legendary Nevada gathering known as Burning Man evolved through collaborative ritual from humble countercultural roots on San Francisco’s Baker Beach into the world-famous desert convergence it is today. Never-before-seen photographs, artifacts, journals, sketches, and notebooks reveal how this temporary experimental desert city came to be—and how it continues to evolve.

This exhibition is organized by the Nevada Museum of Art.

Many of the items included are drawn from the archive collections of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

#CityofDustArchive

Download the Press Release.

Lead Gift

Bently Foundation

Major Gift

Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority

Supporting Gifts

Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller; Eleanor and Robert Preger; The Private Bank by Nevada State Bank; Volunteers in Art of the Nevada Museum of Art

Additional Gifts

City of Reno; Jan and David Hardie

Media Gifts

KUNR Reno Public Radio; Reno News & Review

City of Dust will travel to the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum March 30, 2018 – September 16, 2018 as part of their exhibition No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.

An exhibition featuring materials drawn from the archive collections of Jessica Rath in the Center for Art + Environment.

In 1931, a group of civic-minded citizens led by humanities professor and climate scientist Dr. James Church and local art collector Charles Cutts, established what is today known as the Nevada Museum of Art. Sixty years later, in 1993, a major endowment gift from the Carol Franc Buck Foundation established the Altered Landscape Photography Collection that is now one of the institution’s largest focused collecting areas with approximately 2,000 photographs. In these images, artists reveal the ways that individuals and industries have marked, mined, toured, tested, developed, occupied, and exploited landscapes over the last fifty years. While the image makers take various approaches, together they offer a panoramic sweep of the contentious social and political debates that have shaped contemporary discourse on the changing environment. Held in trust for future generations, an art museum’s permanent collection reflects the values and identity of the community it serves.

The photographs in this exhibition are hung on the walls in a manner known as “salon style.” The term refers to the centuries-old French tradition of displaying art in large, grand gallery spaces as a backdrop for conversation and dialogue. In private French homes, invited guests would gather in salons (or grand living rooms) to discuss art, history, politics, and other important matters of the day. Beginning in 1737, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris re-invented the idea of the salon when they opened their student exhibitions to the general public for the first time. Not only were all community members invited to attend salons, visitors were encouraged to debate and share opinions about the works on view—much like what happens in many art museums today.

This exhibition of Aboriginal paintings made by the Spinifex People of the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia is drawn from the private collection of Seattle-based couple Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi. The Spinifex Arts Project was established in 1996 as a way for the Spinifex people to record and document land ownership following their forced expulsion from the Great Victoria Desert due to the Australian government’s atomic testing program in the 1950s.

This exhibition is drawn from the Martha Hesse Dolan and Robert E. Dolan Collection.

Country is spoken about in the same way non-Aboriginal people may talk about their living human relatives. Aboriginal people cry about country, they worry about country, they listen to country, they visit country and long for country.

−Nici Cumpston

This exhibition presents a concise selection of paintings by Aboriginal Australian female artists, drawn from the collection of Martha Hesse Dolan and Robert E. Dolan. Inspired by the 2015 exhibition, No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, which was organized by the Nevada Museum of Art, the Nevada-based couple began researching Aboriginal Australian art, and acquiring work by female artists, as well as collaborative work or group projects.

The Indigenous people of Australia are inextricably bound to their land. Although the artists in this exhibition are from diverse communities across Australia, each shares a commitment and responsibility to country. For Aboriginal Australian people, country comprises the land, sea, sky, and everything contained therein. Each artist engages with country in various ways through their work. The artists in this exhibition paint the natural features of their country in a non-representational style that enables the artists to keep secret and sacred elements hidden from uninitiated viewers. They depict songlines, also called Dreaming Tracks, which describe the paths taken by the Ancestors as they created the world during the Dreaming. The Dreaming encodes the location of essential waterholes and food sources into stories, dances, and songs that artists translate into visual form.

Aboriginal people who have memorized the songlines can navigate across Australia by following the landmarks made by the Ancestors—such as hills, valleys and watercourses—that are described in the songs. This is called “singing up country,” which is also considered a sacred duty that is necessary to keep the world in existence. The Dreaming and the paintings arising from it are thus both systems of geography and of belief.

For almost five decades, Robert Adams’s extraordinarily influential photographs have explored the western American landscape and its transformations. In his most recent project, Adams shifts focus to his immediate environs, and finds related complexity, beauty, and mystery through photographs made in and around his home in Astoria, Oregon.

From a Palestinian-Kuwaiti family, Tarek Al-Ghoussein was born in 1962 and raised in Kuwait. He is a prominent photographer known for his works that combine elements of landscape and portrait photography.  This exhibition features twelve photographic prints from the artist’s K Files series, as well as a sampling of new works from his Al Sawaber series, both focused on his experience in his native Kuwait.

New Zealand artist Peter Stichbury is fascinated by society’s ongoing obsession with UFO phenomena. He paints historical UFO sightings, as well as portraits of the people who purportedly saw them. With penetrating, but perplexing gazes, Stichbury’s subjects are caught in an alternate reality—forever changed by their sighting experience, but also influenced by the myths, disinformation, and conspiracy theories society imparts on such experiences.

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

Marking the Infinite presents the work of nine of Australia’s leading Aboriginal women artists. While many of them have established reputations in Australia, for many this exhibition represents their American debut. Revered as matriarchs in their communities, the artworks made by these women are proud assertions of who they are and represent the pride they have in their communities. This strength of vision is immediately evident in works that shimmer and swirl, that assert their authority like lightning bolts, or sparkle like the night sky.

Although hailing from some of the most remote communities on the planet, the work of the nine women artists in Marking the Infinite speaks loudly and clearly to our contemporary age. The artists are: Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angeline Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. The works in Marking the Infinite are drawn from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl, Miami-based collectors and philanthropists.

The exhibition was originated by the Nevada Museum of Art, where it was organized by William L. Fox, Director, Center for Art and Environment, and Henry Skerritt, Curator, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia.

Exhibition Tour Schedule for Marking the Infinite:
Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA: August 20, 2016 – December 21, 2016
Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL: January 28, 2017 – May 14, 2017
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV: February 17, 2018 – May 13, 2018
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC: June 2 – September 9, 2018
Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 2018 – February 2019

Lead Sponsor

The Collections Committee of the Nevada Museum of Art:

Barbara and Tad Danz
Martha Hesse Dolan and Robert E. Dolan
Dolan Law LLC
Maureen Mullarkey and Steve Miller
Kathie Bartlett
John C. Deane
Turkey and Peter Stremmel
Nancy and Harvey Fennell
Linda Frye
Marcia and Charles Growdon
Sari and Ian Rogoff
Darby and David Walker

Sponsors

Sandy Raffealli/Bill Pearce Motors of Reno

Supporting Sponsors

Maria and Mark Denzler

Media Sponsors

The Believer powered by the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute; Western Art & Architecture