A monthly roundup of museum events, exhibits and deals you won’t want to pass by!

Sparks Museum and Cultural Center

Through June 14

Wally’s World: The Loneliest Art Collection in Nevada

The exhibit features 35 pieces of art from Wally Cuchine’s collection. In 1987, Life Magazine described US HWY 50 across the center of Nevada as the ―The Loneliest Road in America.‖ The magazine particularly mentioned the 287-mile stretch between Fernley and Ely as ―remote with few points of interest‖ and it urged travelers to have ―survival skills‖ to make the journey.

Sierra Arts Foundation

May 28-June 27

You could say Nancy Pippin, a Twinkies and Northern Nevada enthusiast, creates one-of-a-kind art. The real Twinkies used in the mixed media pieces were purchased on the day that the Hostess Company announced it was going out of business – November 16, 2012. Nancy Peppin is a watercolor painter, known for her images of Twinkies in history and in images of the Nevada landscape. Return of the Twinkies!

Nevada Museum of Art

Linda Besemer: Sine Language

Through May 19

Linda Besemer (b. 1957) is an abstract painter based in Southern California celebrated for her stunning, optical works that upend commonly held notions of what makes a painting. Her work subtly expresses, through formal means, her distinct political outlook. Normally one expects a painting to consist of pigment, whether oil, acrylic or watercolor, applied to some sort of ground, whether canvas, panel or paper. In an exciting subversion of tradition, Besemer creates double-sided paintings (“folds”) of pure acrylic pigment without a ground.

SPECIAL EVENTS

ARTBITE Linda Besemer on Sine Language

Friday, May 3 / noon

Join artist Linda Besemer for an exploration of her optical works that upend commonly held notions of what makes a painting. Cost: Free for members or with paid admission.

Mother’s Day Trunk Show

Saturday, May 11 / 12 – 3 pm

The Mother’s Day Trunk Show features ceramics artist Dane Meier whose pieces celebrate nature and crafting with clay. Cost: Admission to the Trunk Show is FREE.

ARTBITE Tamara Kostianovsky on Meat, Sculpture, and Identity

Friday, May 17 / noon

New York-based Argentine artist Tamara Kostianovsky explores ideas about identity, geography, culture, and history in her fabric sculptures of meat in Voces y Visiones. Cost: Free for members or with paid admission.

Celebrate Earth Day at Idlewild Park, April 21, as performance groups, vendors, and educational booths unite with a foundation based on a three-point theme: The Natural World, Many Cultures and Green Technologies. This free festival is for all senses – with music from around the world, sights to inspire, tastes and smells from a variety of food selections, and many hands-on activities.

Animalia Kingdom

The new Animalia Kingdom of this years event is a pet friendly zone! With doggie daycares available for you to utilize while you visit the rest of the event!  In this section you will find pony rides, numerous dogs and cats available for adoption.

Artists’ Grove

This creative corner will be a new installation showcasing artists, the local art world, and artsy activities for attendees.

Conservation Zone

Organized by The Nature Conservancy and NV Energy this year, this area will include interactive and educational activities for kids and adults. There will also be a “Picnic for Earth” area with available picnic blankets so that visitors can relax on this beautiful day.

Earth Innovations – Science Rules!

A large component of Earth Day goals is sustainability – whether that is renewable fuel and energy sources, new technologies for reducing or cleaning up pollution and other human impacts, conservation of natural resources through both technologies and habits, new agricultural technologies – this could go on forever. Earth Innovations seeks to explore and engage the ideas of our young minds in these areas as young minds are key to a sustainable future. This year this will include a Science Fair with all Washoe County high schools invited to participate.

The Garden

Another new section of the event this year that will focus on green growth, plants of all kinds and local farming. A Farmer’s Market will also be included in this section.

Future of Transportation

Test Driving hybrid vehicles, and learn about the future of electric cars, alternative fuels, transit, rail, bicycle taxis and more.

There is no parking within the park, but there is FREE PARKING at Reno High School, just a block away with Bike Taxi’s to drop you off at the Future of Transportation!

National Automobile Museum

Special Delivery

Imagine a time when the customer ruled and deliveries were commonplace. Fresh dairy and bakery goods, starched and pressed laundry, and boxes of groceries were brought right to your doorstep. Delivery trucks hit the road with the invention of the motorcar. Many were simply modified cars until demand called for light-duty trucks to meet the needs of communities across the country for both residential and commercial services. Just blocks from the museum, at 627 Mill Street, a french laundry offered delivery service in a 1912 Ford Model T featured in this exhibit, along with other historical “Special Deliveries.”

For more info, call 775-333-9300 or visit www.automuseum.org

Nevada Art Museum

EXHIBITIONS

Voces y Visiones: Highlights from the Collection of El Museo del Barrio, New York

Opens March 2
A wide ranging and diverse survey of the stellar art collection from New York’s El Museo del Barrio, the leading Latino cultural institution in the U.S. dedicated to Latino, Latin American, and Caribbean art. This lively exhibition presents over fifty objects, including sculpture, painting, prints, photographs, and mixed media installations addressing themes such as identity politics, colonialism, emotional connections to homeland, and contemporary visual culture. Artworks created by living artists are contextualized with a concise selection of ancient Taíno stone carvings.

This exhibition was jointly organized by the El Museo del Barrio and the Nevada Museum of Art.

SPECIAL EVENTS

ART BITE Meet the Artist: Frohawk Two Feathers

Friday, March 15 / noon

Frohawk Two Feathers presents mixed media paintings filled with real and imagined colonial histories. Cost: $10 / FREE for MEMBERS Funded in part by Nevada Humanities.

Art Night

Friday, March 15 / 7 – 10 pm

Join us for an all-ages night of live performances featuring Frohawk Two Feathers of SUPERDELUX, art projects, a hands-on printing workshop. an interactive photo station and more! Cost: $5 Presented in partnership with the Holland Project.

ART BITE Meet the Artist: Cecile Chong on Voces y Visiones

Friday, March 29 / noon

Join Ecuador-born, New York-based artist Cecile Chong as she discusses the entanglement of culture, history, place, and interpretation, and how we are all more alike than different from one another. Cost: $10 / FREE for MEMBERS Funded in part by Nevada Humanities.

The Discovery

Leprechaun Chase 5k Run/Walk

Are you faster than a leprechaun? Your chance to find out happens Sunday, March 17th at the inaugural Leprechaun Chase through Reno’s Midtown District. The race starts and ends at The Discovery!

A portion of the proceeds from the race benefit The Discovery, so gather your family and friends and help make this race a success.

Date: Sunday, March 17th
Time: 8:30am
Register: www.race178.com/leprechaunchase

Wilbur D. May Museum

Creatures

Visitors will come face-to-face with amazing full-size animatronics of wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, dinosaurs and sea monsters. The Creatures exhibit features educational and interactive elements for kids, including a fossil dig, a glacier simulation display, and several touch stations.

Creatures opens at the Wilbur D. May Museum on Saturday, March 2 and runs through Sunday, June 2. Tickets are $9.00 for adults and $8.00 for children and seniors.

Saya Fine Art – Grand Opening!

New medium, New works and new subject.
Opens in Reno’s Arts District along the Riverwalk We are delighted to announce the official opening of SAYA FINE ART STUDIO: Recent Paintings By well known artist, Somboun, on view beginning February 23, 2013.

The grand opening of the SAYA FINE ART STUDIO studio is the first solo gallery by artist and painter Somboun Sayasane in Reno, Nevada. The opening of the gallery follows Somboun’s very successful career in San Francisco. Open Monday to Wednesday 11 a. m. to 5 p. m. and Sunday by appointment only.

“I love it here in Reno, I have met many talented artist and decided to open this gallery in the Riverwalk because I love art and enjoy being surrounded by the talents of other painters.” Somboun explains.

Exhibit opens January 14 with the opening reception scheduled for Friday, January 18, and a special movie premier at the Nevada Museum of Art Saturday, February 2

The Holland Project Gallery will host Built to Weather, a group photography exhibit celebrating eras, pivotal moments and stellar landscapes related to snowboarding. It’s the first time a show of this context and caliber has been exhibited in Reno.

The exhibit opens January 14 and runs through February 8 at the Holland Project Gallery located at 140 Vesta St. between Wells Avenue and Virginia Street in Reno.  The opening reception for Built to Weather will take place Friday, January 18 from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at the Holland Project.

Built to Weather will feature eight renowned photographers including: Bud Fawcett, Ian Ruhter, Mike Basich, Jim Zellers with Richard Leversee, Mike Yoshida, Paul Laca, Chris Carnel and Tim Peare.

The exhibit curator Chris Carnel has tracked down prominent works from these diverse globetrotting photographers to form a unique crew of individuals intrinsically involved with snowboarding. This diverse selection of photographs features pinnacle, historical moments involving iconic individuals that have lived and breathed the life of the sport.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Nevada Museum of Art will be screening Basich’s film Open Space at 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 2. Admission is $5.  The film will be followed by a question and answer session with Chris Carnel and Ian Ruhter. They will speak about their involvement in documenting the sport; Ruhter from both sides of the camera. Ruhter will also elaborate on his cutting edge style of shooting involving a truck and wet plates as well his work in Built to Weather and being an ex-pro in the sport.

Of the group, Bud Fawcett has photographed some of the inaugural moments in snowboarding history. Fawcett moved to Tahoe in the early 1980’s. He came from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with a background in photojournalism to document the earliest inklings of what freestyle snowboarding would become. Fawcett also became the photo editor for the legendary International Snowboard Magazine in the late 80’s. His subjects like Terry Kidwell, Shaun Palmer and Keith Kimmel were way ahead of the curve and heavily influenced by iconic vert skaters like Hosoi and Caballero.

Representing a more current end of the spectrum, Richard Leversee photographs of Jim Zellers in the exhibition depict a noteworthy moment in snowboarding history. Zellers, early mountaineer in the world of snowboarding, was documented by Leversee as the first and only person to snowboard the 45 degree cable-route side of Yosemite’s Half-Dome. In 2001, after five years of winter attempts, Zellers and Leversee hiked through the night to arrive in perfect conditions to climb and freeride down Half-Dome unassisted.

Curating these images by Fawcett and Leversee as well as photographs by Ruhter, Basich, Yoshida, Laca and Peare, Chris Carnel is drawing from his own experience within the sport. Having grown up in Reno, Carnel started shooting photography in the mid-80’s. By the end of the 90’s, he had worked with International Snowboard Magazine ISM (ISM), Snowboarder Magazine, Thrasher, Trans-World Snowboarding, Bikini and Heckler. In 2001 he helped publish A Declaration of Independents. Through his early and continued involvement in snowboarding, Carnel brings an authentic knowledge of the sport to the work he has selected for the exhibition.

For more information on Built to Weather, please visit www.hollandreno.org.

A monthly roundup of museum events, exhibits and deals you won’t want to pass by!

Nevada Museum of Art

The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon

Through February 10

Celebrate a bygone era during this exhilarating presentation of vintage neon signs that once graced some of Nevada’s most iconic restaurants, casinos, hotels, and business establishments. From flashing incandescent bulbs to candy-colored neon tubes, the nostalgic pieces featured in this exhibition have not been seen publicly since they illuminated street side locales decades ago.

SPECIAL EVENTS

ART BITE — Meet the Artist: Jean-Pierre Bonfort

Friday, January 11 / noon

French photographer Jean-Pierre Bonfort will talk about using a cell phone camera to create the journey documented in his photographs. He will be joined by Denis Bisson, the Cultural Attaché to the French Consulate in San Francisco.

Free for Museum members and with paid admission

Reno’s Mad Men: Celebrating the Oral Histories of Old Reno in Sound, Light, and Image

Thursday, January 17 / 6 – 8 pm

Reno’s “mad men” era was a time of intense interest in Reno as a place, a destination city of gaming, glitz, and glamour, and it kindled a strong advertising sector around the old casinos. Listen to the voices of old Reno’s “mad men” through newly digitized oral histories, and join the conversation to share stories of your experiences of Reno’s past. Colin Robertson, Curator of Education, and Alicia Barber, Director of the University of Nevada, Reno Oral History Program, will facilitate an informal roundtable discussion. Following the program, enjoy a classic cocktail in the gallery, surrounded by the signs in The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon.

$10 / $8 Museum members

Film: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a film by Alison Klayman

Saturday, January 19 / 1 pm

Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai Weiwei expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics.

$10 / $8 Museum members

The Discovery

The Discovery recently added several new exhibits focused on early motion picture techniques in its Da Vinci’s Corner gallery. The additions include a tabletop praxinoscope and zoetrope and a large, free-standing zoetrope that measures more than six feet in diameter. A humorous animated introduction to the inventors of these animation devices is also featured as part of these new exhibits.

Marvelous Marbling

January 5, 12, 19, 26

Create your own marbled stationary while you learn about the principles of density that make this unique art project possible.

Celebrate the holidays this year with a trip down memory lane in The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon Signs.  From flashing incandescent bulbs to candy-colored neon tubes, these vintage signs evoke a bygone era when the Mapes Hotel Casino, Harold’s Club and Nevada Club were packed with revelers and The Rat Pack crooned. On view through February 10, 2013, the exhibition includes signs from Parker’s Western Wear, the Holiday Hotel and Buffalo Bar – all from the collection of Renoite Will Durham.

For the past year, Durham and the Nevada Museum of Art spent countless hours restoring this collection of signs amassed over the last decade. For Durham, who acquired his first sign in 1996, collecting the pieces has been a labor of love. In many cases, he has gone to great lengths to save signs that would have otherwise been discarded, but Durham recognized that saving them was crucial to preserving Nevada’s history.

“When you consider how each sign developed —from concept through to the illustrators, metal workers, painters and neon artists—you realize how each sign is completely unique,” said Durham. “They not only represent an outpouring of creative content, but they also serve as a legacy to the industries of our region.”

Join the Museum on Thursday, January 17 from 6 to 8 pm for Reno’s Mad Men: Celebrating the Oral Histories of Old Reno in Sound, Light, and Image. Listen to the voices of old Reno’s “mad men”, share your own stories, and enjoy a classic cocktail in the gallery, surrounded by the signs in The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon. $10 / $8 Museum members.

SPONSORSHIP OF THE EXHIBITION

Lead sponsorship provided by The Bretzlaff Foundation. Major sponsorship provided by Earl and Wanda Casazza, IGT, E. L. Cord Foundation and George and Irene Drews. Supporting sponsorship provided by E. L. Wiegand Foundation. Additional support provided by City of Reno Arts and Culture Commission, Charlotte and Dick McConnell and the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

A monthly roundup of museum events, exhibits and deals you won’t want to pass by!

National Automobile Museum

A superstar has returned to the National Automobile Museum: genius Buckminster Fuller’s famed 1934 Dymaxion. Newly restored in the U.K., this car was so far ahead of its time, it’s scary! (And ours is the only one left in the world!)

Wilbur D. May Museum

From the clay pottery in the parlor to your son’s growing rock collection, you’re slowly amassing a collection worthy of any natural history museum. Save 50% on tickets if you buy before 11/8 with this Living Social Deal!

Nevada Museum of Art

Always a worthwhile stop, this sleek museum is even more so between now and February 10. Check out, “The Light Circus: Art of Nevada Neon Signs,” an exclusive trip down memory lane, featuring restored examples of Nevada’s bright (neon) past.

The Discovery

Cocktail chemistry meets culinary creativity at Chemistry of the Cocktail, November 17! Hands-on mixology demonstrations pair with delicious fare from local favorites. Add to that, clever art projects, a feverish raffle and an exciting live auction and you’ve got a recipe for an exciting evening. All to benefit Reno’s favorite hands-on place for children and their families.

NEVADA MUSEUM OF ART

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky

June 30 – October 28

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer who creates bridges between sound art and contemporary visual culture. Through music, photographs and film stills from his journey to the Antarctic, along with original artworks, and re-appropriated archival materials, Miller uses Antarctica as an entry point for contemplating humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

Live Performance: July 21, 7 – 10pm

A BIG live music performance is coming up at the Museum: world-renowned DJ Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Paul has a huge international following and plays around the world in venues from France to Japan to Mexico City. He is a featured artist on Syfy Channel’s “Imagine Greater” series, and an Artist-In-Residence at the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in New York City. Tickets are $15 / $10 Museum members. Local food trucks and two cash bars will be open during the event. DJ Frkse opens the show.

THE DISCOVERY MUSEUM

New Summer Hours (through Aug. 26):

Monday and Tuesday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Thursday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m.

Enjoy daily art activities in Art Alcove and a seismic challenge for two different age groups called “Make Your Own Quake” set for July 21^st, 28^th and 29^th. For more information about these and other activities at The Discovery, visit the calendar of events on the museum’s website at www.nvdm.org.

NATIONAL AUTOMOBILE MUSEUM

Movin’ & Groovin’ Party at the National Automobile Museum

Friday, July 20, 2012, 7 – 10 p.m.

Don’t miss your chance to see and party with the Mutant Rides exhibit before it closes.

This will also mark the first day of the first ever ArtCar Fest Reno!  Art Cars from around the country and Canada will be featured in the National Automobile Museum parking lot and Harrod Blank and the artists from the fest and in the exhibit will be introduced.  An endless loop slide presentation of art cars & mutants will be presented.

Mutant Rides: Origin of a Species

They began a spontaneously, a change in the genetic code, and evolved from the assemble line to an emerging species on the Black Rock Desert.  These rolling works of art are now deeply entrenched in the culture of Burning Man. Imagine a world of motorized vehicles where boundaries are limitless, imaginations rule and the bizarre becomes the norm.

500 events. 100 workshops. 33 ongoing events. 60 percent FREE.

For the entire month of July, Artown brings distinguished artists from around the world, across the country and those that live in our community all for the sake of cultural diversity and artistic innovation.

Featured Events:

July 1 – Opening Night with the Mickey Hart Band
July 2 – Reno Philharmonic “Pops at the Ranch”
July 2 – TheatreWorks of Northern Nevada “Curiosity Cat”
July 4 – Patriotic Music Ensemble
July 9 – Reno Youth Philharmonic and Reno Youth Jazz Orchestra “Summer Serenade”
July 9 – Erth’s Dinosaur Petting Zoo
July 11 – Delphi 2 Dublin
July 16 – University of Nevada School of Arts
July 16 – BAM Percusion “The Blue Barrel Show”
July 18 – Oliver Mtukudzi & the Black Spirits
July 23 – Reno Pops Orchestra “Sights and Sounds of the Silver Screen”
July 23 – Colin Concert for Kids
July 25 – Ana Tijoux
July 30 – Carmen Lundy
July 30 – “The Let’s Go Science” Show
July 31 – Closing Night with Maceo Parker

For artist Chester Arnold, painting is as much about politics and social responsibility as it is about crafting luscious large-scale oil paintings in the tradition of nineteenth-century European artists. With sometimes dark humor, the paintings in Chester Arnold: On Earth as It Is in Heaven opening August 14 at the Nevada Museum of Art, asks viewers to consider the impacts of human and industrial consumption, accumulation, and waste on the natural environment.

Since he began painting over three decades ago, West Coast-based artist Arnold has cleverly confronted a range of challenging subjects. Concerned about the increasing impact of human interventions on landscapes in a densely populated and deeply consumer-driven world, Arnold’s work questions the nature of human beings’ relationship to the landscape, offering cautionary warnings about society’s unbridled cycles of production and consumption on an industrial scale.

“My paintings are a big conversation I’m having with the world,” Arnold says of the richly-painted canvases spanning his thirty year career. Many of the paintings in the exhibition are based loosely on real environmental scenarios, such as the monumental canyon of discarded automobile tires that populates Arnold’s Entropic Landscape—a real larger-than-life discarded tire pile exists in California’s Central Valley. Arnold’s images of deforestation and tree harvesting in paintings such as Histories (2010) are not unlike the paintings of similar despoiled landscapes painted by nineteenth century American artists working long before him. And Arnold has also made three paintings of large-scale strip mines, including Holding Pond (1996) seen from an aerial view. The sublime terraced canyons are punctuated by smoky canyons and smoldering fires with holding ponds that contain mineral-rich, blood-red or copper-green drainage run-off that has been left behind by the mining process. Arnold’s depictions of such altered landscapes bring the consequences of human progress to the attention of viewers.

“The pieces in this exhibition engage with issues of work and labor, nature and environment, industrial production and consumption, and the amassing and disposal of consumer products,” says Ann M. Wolfe, Curator and Exhibitions and Collections, Nevada Museum of Art. “The works are both cautionary and confessional, revealing human foibles and follies and what Arnold considers to be their devastating consequences. Arnold’s landscape paintings also ask viewers to consider how human activities—of both the individual and large-scale industries—impact the landscape.”

Also featured in the exhibition is a series of paintings Arnold calls Accumulations, which reveal the ongoing cycle of consumption and disposal resulting from mass production. First created during the late 1990s, a time in American history noted for its booming economic prosperity, Arnold navigates America’s seeming disregard for accumulating and discarding mass-produced merchandise.

Underlying Arnold’s critiques of America’s consumer culture is an implicit acknowledgment of the economic engine driving mass production. Many of Arnold’s paintings allude to corporate business culture and the resources required to keep offices running throughout the country. The Business in America is Business (2008) and Means of Communication (2008) both depict streets littered with discarded office correspondence, perhaps cast from the skyscrapers of urban financial districts during past ticker-tape parades. It is especially ironic that the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers acquired one of Arnold’s paper accumulation paintings, Means of Communication (2008), for its corporate art collection not long before the company declared bankruptcy in 2008—the largest U.S. bankruptcy filing in history.

“Arnold’s works ask viewers to consider how one’s individual behaviors interface with ongoing cycles of industrial production and consumption,” says Ann M. Wolfe, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Nevada Museum of Art. “They ask us to acknowledge and celebrate hard work, but to consider the irrevocable consequences of our labors.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, a special dialogue between San Francisco Chronicle Art Critic Kenneth Baker and artist Chester Arnold takes place Saturday, September 11 from 5:30 to 8 pm. Join Baker and Arnold as they discuss Arnold’s work on display in the Feature Gallery. A reception following dialogue is included in the ticket price. Cost: $15/$12 Museum Members; $18 at the door.

Chester Arnold: On Earth as It Is in Heaven is presented at the Nevada Museum of Art from August 14 through October 17, 2010 as part of the Museum’s wide-ranging Art + Environment Series, which provides timely, engaging, and rewarding educational opportunities for artists, scholars, and communities to engage with ideas pertinent to the intersections of art and environments. In 2009, the Museum launched the Center for Art + Environment, an international initiative that supports the practice, study, and awareness of creative interactions between people and the natural, built, and virtual environments. A book, published in conjunction with the exhibition, will be available in the Museum Store featuring essays by Ann M. Wolfe, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections and Colin M. Robertson, Curator of Education.