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History: The (shocking!) new state museum

Everything old is new again

There’s a shocking secret in the new Nevada State Museum. In the back — past the ichthyosaur fossil and the bighorn sheep and Comstock miners and railroad trucks, all those trusty icons of Silver State history — is  … a shimmering pink wall stocked with elaborate showgirl costumes? Yes. It’s deliciously gaudy, a wall of dyed feathers, bangles and sequins.

“People love this display,” says Curator of Collections Dennis McBride, who gazes up at it with something resembling paternal pride. “We wanted to make it glamorous and colorful, just like this piece of Las Vegas history.”

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It’s also an apt metaphor for the newly opened Nevada State Museum in the Springs Preserve: The new building is filled with flashy surprises, from clever interactive exhibits to polished video dioramas. After officials finally got word late in the 2011 legislative session that the museum would, in fact, have enough money to pack, move and operate, it opened Oct. 28 to nearly immediate buzz. Little wonder. It’s a quantum upgrade from its former digs at Lorenzi Park — where the museum had been since 1982 — a hidden location that could often elicit a shrug and a, “We have a history museum?” Now with roughly twice the space — 70,000 square feet — the museum can do nearly twice as much. “I’m most pleased with the breadth of the collection,” says McBride. “Now you can get a nice idea of the entire history of the state of Nevada, from prehistory to the present.”

[HEAR MORE: Learn about a quirky museum outside Beatty on " KNPR's State of Nevada."]

But there’s an intangible benefit, too, one that Museum Director David Millman hits on — and one that museum employees refer to when they talk about how, well, how authentically museum-y it is.

“We’re able to make it more professional, more national in terms of our presentation,” says Millman. “Other cities have cultural institutions because they have foundations and they’ve been around for hundreds of years, but Las Vegas is such a new city, it’s been lacking in a tradition of donors creating cultural institutions. That’s what we tried to do here — to create something on that scale the community could be proud of.”

Two of the biggest upgrades are behind the scenes. More space means the museum has more room to collect, store and exhibit artifacts from around the state — in other words, more cultural weight. The fact that the museum is now under the wing of the state Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs — not the now-dissolved Cultural Affairs department — means the museum can take advantage of promotional muscle from the state office charged with luring visitors. They call the museum part of “cultural tourism,” but visiting the new museum is more akin to stepping into a time machine.

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The Nevada State Museum is located inside Springs Preserve. Info: 486-5205 or www.museums.nevadaculture.org — Andrew Kiraly

 

As a longtime journalist in Southern Nevada, native Las Vegan Andrew Kiraly has served as a reporter covering topics as diverse as health, sports, politics, the gaming industry and conservation. He joined Desert Companion in 2010, where he has helped steward the magazine to become a vibrant monthly publication that has won numerous honors for its journalism, photography and design, including several Maggie Awards.