In 1948, William Goetz, the famed Hollywood producer, head of Universal Pictures, and legendary art collector, purchased a painting attributed to Vincent Van Gogh for $50,000. Although it was acquired from a reputable art dealer and deemed genuine by a prominent Van Gogh expert at the time, debate about the painting’s authenticity ignited an art world controversy that impacted U.S. foreign affairs.

For decades, only a handful of people knew the whereabouts of the painting, known as Study by Candlelight. Today, the Goetz family heirs hope to learn more about the provenance of the painting by drawing upon recent scientific developments in the study of artist materials and working methods.

In presenting this exhibition, the Nevada Museum of Art makes no attempt to determine the authenticity of the legendary painting. Rather, the exhibition re-visits its extraordinary story through archival documents, correspondence, photographs, and press materials that have never before been brought together in one place. The exhibition will look closely at the Goetz family’s Hollywood lifestyle and legendary art collection, assess what is known about the provenance of Study by Candlelight, consider the painting within the stylistic and historical context of Van Gogh’s body of work, and report on the art world controversies and international politics that have surrounded the painting.

This unique presentation invites viewers and scholars to draw their own conclusions and weigh in on this great Van Gogh debate.

Lead sponsors

I. Heidi Loeb Hegerich and the Bretzlaff Foundation

Major sponsors

Bally Technologies and Wells Fargo

Supporting sponsor

Gabelli Funds

Additional support

Jeanne and Alan Blach, John and Andrea Deane, John H.O. La Gatta, and Jennifer L. Patterson

In-kind support

Joseph Coli, DVM with Comstock Equine Hospital

A 2012 graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno’s MFA program, Amerique Powell’s lively acrylic paintings are explosions of color and pattern. Her works bears the influence of late 20th century art movements, particularly Feminist Art and Pattern and Decoration. In the tradition of these movements, Powell dares to paint using a traditionally domestic, “decorative” palette and populates her faceted, abstract environments with signature images of her playful felines.

According to the artist, “These works are expressions of my ideas about certain possible experiences they may have as small animals living in a bizarre, human world.”

This exhibition is part of the Nevada Museum of Art’s Emerging Artist Series.

This exhibition samples the Nevada Museum of Art’s diverse and growing contemporary art collection alongside a selection of artworks on loan from private collectors. The Museum recognizes Contemporary Art as a crucial area of investment, and curators seek out works for the permanent collection that reflect the institution’s ongoing commitment to artists’ creative interactions with natural, built, and virtual environments.

Recent additions to the collection include Anne Lindberg’s ethereal graphite and colored pencil piece Motion Drawing 25, Helen and Newton Harrison’s monumental mixed media drawing, 8 Yuba Mappings: A Disagreement in All Cases, as well as a studio-made photographic book by San Francisco-based artist and pilot Michael Light, who also photographed Roden Crater/Meteor Crater 07.07.11 and James Turrell’s Roden Crater Earth Work.

These artworks from the Museum’s collection are complemented by a concise selection of paintings by artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell, Aboudia Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, and Takashi Murakami, on loan from leading West Coast art collectors.

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.

In anticipation of the Museum’s 80th Anniversary in 2011, contemporary artist Jacob Hashimoto was commissioned to create a large-scale, site-specific artwork to hang in the Donald W. Reynolds Grand Hall. Hashimoto’s sculpture—fabricated from thousands of small “kites”—is made from bamboo-stiffened rice papers not unlike those used for centuries to make traditional Japanese kites.

The three-dimensional cascading form—which could be interpreted as a peaceful, floating cloud or a spiraling vortex—is suspended by nylon mono-filament and responds specifically to the Museum’s unique architecture and changing light.

The sculpture is dedicated to the Volunteers in Art (VIA), in recognition of the many individuals who donate countless hours to advance the institution’s mission.

Major sponsor

Volunteers in Art (VIA) and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Colorado artist Hunt Rettig’s three-dimensional, mixed media assemblages are made with unexpected combinations of materials, including polyester film, synthetic rubber, plastic, wood, silicone, metal nuts and bolts, and acrylic paints. Possessed of preternatural luminosity and largely indecipherable construction, these works are suggestive of the organic, the cellular, the sensual, and the bodily.

With respect to his vision, Rettig explains: “Within my terrain I see cross sections of cross sections, unnatural confluences, unnavigable borders, unrestricted constriction and breath-like expansion. Especially with plantlike forms I see what I can best describe as the invisibly visible…landscapes unnatural yet natural at the same time.”

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 Art Awards is scheduled in conjunction with The Scholastic Art and 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.

More than 1,100 submissions are evaluated annually by a panel of judges made up of local artists and art professionals and exceptional work is awarded either a Gold Key, Silver Key or Honorable Mention. Gold Key artwork goes on to compete in the national Scholastic Art Awards completion. Select award winning regional entries are exhibited in a month long exhibition, which will be held at the Holland Project Gallery at 140 Vesta Street in Reno. Regional award winners are invited to attend an awards ceremony at the Museum attended by over 400 students, parents, teachers and members of the community. National award winners are invited to attend an awards ceremony in New York City.

Sponsor

U.S. Bancorp Foundation

Additional support

Wild Women Artists

Submissions

Submissions for the 2013 Scholastic Art Awards are currently being accepted. All work must be digitally uploaded to www.artandwriting.org by January 19, 2013. Completed submission forms and fees are due on January 19, 2013, and must be delivered to:

Nevada Museum of Art
Attn: Jacque Dawson
160 West Liberty Street
Reno, NV 89501

For additional information on the submission guidelines, categories and deadlines or to begin the submission process, please visit: www.artandwriting.org.

If you have questions about The Scholastic Art Awards, please contact Jacque Dawson, Nell J. Redfield School Services Manager, by email or at 775.398.7253.

This exhibition surveys the architecture, urban planning, and design work of American architect William L. Pereira through images, models, drawings, and plans. The exhibition re-examines the modest spaces he created early in his career and the large-scale structures for which he is largely remembered.

The structures Pereira designed were far-flung and often large in scale, ranging from San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Tower to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the University of California, San Diego Geisel Library to the master plan for California’s Irvine Ranch and the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); Marineland of the Pacific to Cape Canaveral; a master plan for Doha—the capital city of Qatar—to the National Medical Center of Iran. Pereira became the first architect for the University of California system and master planned and designed many of the buildings for the University of California, Irvine.

The purpose of the project is to frame Pereira’s practice within the histories of architectural modernism and southern California in the mid-twentieth century. Because Pereira’s career parallels the arc of modern architecture and its focus on iconic form, the evolution and trajectory of his work sheds light on the closing window of the modern movement.

Photography is encouraged in this exhibition. Post and share your images with us on your favorite social sites!

Become and Museum fan on Facebook (LINK) and take part in our daily competition throughout August. Answer the question: “What am I looking at?” for the chance to win a prize. A BIG thank you to Scott Mortimore of Mortimore Creative for the images and prose!

Exhibition design by Nik Hafermaas, Uebersee (LINK)

CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition. The book is introduced by Colin M. Robertson with essays by Curtis Fentress, Alan Hess, Thomas S. Hines, Scott Johnson, Geoff Manaugh, JoAnne S. Northrup, and Elizabeth A.T. Smith. Copies are available for $29.99 in the Museum Store. To purchase a catalogue via phone order, please contact Jackie Clay, Manager, Museum Store at 775.329.3333 ex. 106.

This exhibition is originated by the Nevada Museum of Art and curated by Colin M. Robertson, Charles N. Mathewson Curator of Education, Nevada Museum of Art.

Lead sponsors

Louise A. Tarble Foundation, E.L. Cord Foundation and Nancy and Martin Cohen

Major sponsors

Nancy and Brian Kennedy, Susan and Bill Pereira, Reno Orthopaedic Clinic and Volunteers in Art (VIA)

Supporting sponsors

Dickson Realty, Jan and David Hardie, Eleanor and Robert Preger, and RBC Wealth Management

Additional sponsors

Charlotte and Dick McConnell, MINI of Reno and the Mark E Pollack Foundation

In-kind support

The Irvine Company, LAYAR, and Fortyonetwenty

Media sponsor

KNPB Channel 5 Public Broadcasting

Maps are not pictures of the land, but rather abstractions we use to understand where we are and how to move across the landscape. Maps can be as complicated and difficult to read as an abstract painting, but because we are surrounded by maps–from printed road maps bought at gas stations to digital ones on our smartphones–we are adept at reading them. Our familiarity with them means that we also sometimes forget that they are amazing objects.

In her ongoing series of mapping projects, Erika Osborne positions people as they gaze at landscapes such as the Grand Canyon. Then she paints lines from maps representing those scenes, or the contours of the land itself, on their skin. When we view Osborne’s photographs, she asks us to think about the differences and similarities between looking at a place, reading a map, and looking at a picture of a place. Osborne also paints maps on people while they are standing in front of large wall-mounted maps that convey different types of information, such as climate change or the spread of destructive insects and fires. She makes clear the connection between people, landscapes, navigational maps, and those maps used to take action in the landscape.

Osborne earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico, where she helped run the Land Arts of the American West program. She now teaches at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where she runs the Art and Environment and Place: Appalachia. By using the body as a canvas upon which to paint maps, Osborne helps us regain appreciation for how maps place us in the landscape. The result is a renewed appreciation for cartography, one of the oldest and most sophisticated graphic technologies invented by humans.

This archive exhibition includes research materials, maps, drawings, photographs, and objects from 2005 through 2010. The archive is in the collection of Nevada Museum of Art, Center for Art + Environment, Gift of Erika Osborne.

Support

John Ben Snow Memorial Trust and Metabolic Studio

Laurie Brown’s panoramic photographs of Las Vegas, Nevada, reveal lush green grass, artificial waterways, and tropical palm trees set against a stark waterless desert landscape. For Brown, who has documented suburban spaces and the altered landscape for more than forty years, these easily overlooked peripheral areas—where vulnerable wilderness meets encroaching suburban sprawl—reveal the all-too-real paradoxes of life in the desert.

Brown’s engaging photographs ask us to consider how far Las Vegans will go to live in a place not intended for living and whether their desires to do so are, in the end, sustainable.